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I often face people asking questions, about which technology is best to use in a particular software development task. Whether Ruby on Rails is better than ASP.NET when it comes to server-to-server communication, etc. If the question is asked at Stack Overflow it is most likely to get closed, because it is general and is not discussing a particular software development problem.

Is there a Stack Exchange community, where such questions can be discussed among software developers?

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The problem with these questions is that unless you are very specific about your requirements all you get is either a list of people's favourite technology or an argument in comments about which technology is "better".

In general these questions are off topic for Programmers too - we explicitly mention this in our FAQ.

The truth is that these days, unless you have a really specific problem, there can be little to choose from between technologies. This means that your question is either "not constructive" or "too localised".

What's more important is your familiarity with the technology and problem space. If you are a Ruby on Rails developer then it probably makes sense to use that for your server-to-server application.

For more information on this area see Gorilla vs Shark

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  • Yeah. Most of these questions are so unspecific, they remind me of Ali G asking a Gender researcher: "Which one is better - man or woman?" youtu.be/sBtDOD-QKSw?t=36s
    – Pekka
    Dec 22, 2011 at 11:00
  • Thank you. As an ASP.NET developer that knows very little about Ruby and PHP, I am amazed at how short their code snippets usually are, whereas the same functionality in .net would take much more coding effort. That is why I think that questions like "which technology is better" are specific enough in their own sense. When someone asks which design pattern is best at a particular situation, the responses are also usually a set of personal opinions, but these questions pass the "off-topic"'ness test.
    – Maxim V. Pavlov
    Dec 22, 2011 at 11:11
  • @MaximV.Pavlov - the design pattern questions should be judged by the same rule, but they are different as they are an implementation question.
    – ChrisF Mod
    Dec 22, 2011 at 11:13
  • @Scrooge - when there is a particular task described in a question, and it is being asked, which technology is best (easiest) for solving it, it is the same implementation question, right?
    – Maxim V. Pavlov
    Dec 22, 2011 at 11:17
  • @MaximV.Pavlov - That was my point about "being specific".
    – ChrisF Mod
    Dec 22, 2011 at 11:20
  • @Scrooge - so, in case I am stating a problem and asking which technology is best at solving it, I am asking a correct question that is not to be closed?
    – Maxim V. Pavlov
    Dec 22, 2011 at 11:36
  • @Maxim Yes, but if your problem is "I want to make a website" or something similarly broad and generic, it might not be enough.
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Dec 22, 2011 at 13:58

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