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    The second argument is plain wrong. There're lots of not-so-every-day questions on SO, for example in [algorithm], [language-agnostic], [math], [programming-languages], [data-structures] and other tags. In general, nobody's gonna push you out, if the question can be understood by average CS graduate (and the ones that require special knowledge usually also stay). Commented Feb 21, 2011 at 12:09
  • It doesn't mean there's no room for a new place (there probably is), but I'm yet to see a real CS question actively repelled by SO community. Commented Feb 21, 2011 at 12:20
  • I have not been too active on SO, but its FAQ says: "a specific programming problem, a software algorithm, software tools commonly used by programmers, matters that are unique to the programming profession", none of which covers all CS - TCS. Of course "software algorithm" can be interpreted arbitrarily broadly, but at least hardware guys are certainly OT. Myself, I would not ask a "serious" CS question on SO, simply because the noise of nonsense even on simple programming questions is disturbingly high. You don't get CS people to ask if the felt signal/noise ratio is low, so no repelling. Commented Feb 21, 2011 at 16:37
  • Perceived signal/noise ratio is another (maybe valid) issue, but people do ask and answer questions on data-mining, robotics, grammars, complexity, EBNF and other CS topics here. (Can't tell if they're sufficiently 'academic', but they're here) Commented Feb 21, 2011 at 17:50
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    @Nikita: The CS proposal cites a few questions that were closed on TCS as too basic. Do you really think that “How to prove that Satisfiability is in DTIME(n^2)” is SO material? Commented Feb 21, 2011 at 19:00
  • @Gilles There're more than few questions on complexity theory and some thorough answers on SO already. My point is, nobody is pushing you out. It may be true that some CS professor isn't dying to be on one site with "filthy engineers", but that's not because those engineers are gonna kill him, eat his brain and close his questions. So, don't blame engineers. Commented Feb 21, 2011 at 19:28
  • @Nikita: I'm not blaming engineers! But don't blame the CS professor for not having time to wade through a lot of questions that neither interest him nor particularly call on his expertise to find the relatively very few questions in his subfield of CS. Commented Feb 21, 2011 at 19:32
  • @Gilles That's actually a bad example: difficulty to search for Haskell or Lua or Java isn't a reason to create a new site for them. Not to mention, it can easily be (if not already is) addressed through stackapps. In fact, there're many apps which will allow professor to not resort to search at all. Commented Feb 21, 2011 at 19:51
  • @Gilles Forgot to mention, tag sets were also created to address topic-following problem. Just in case you're interested. (Although I still find stackapps more convenient) Commented Feb 21, 2011 at 20:02
  • @Nikita: Actually you're making my point for me: even Norman has a hard time, and his interests are a lot closer to programmers' than the average CS professor. Commented Feb 21, 2011 at 20:02
  • @Gilles That question is more than two years old, from the beta age of Stack Overflow :) Try posting it today. Commented Feb 21, 2011 at 20:08
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    @Gilles That being said, I do think CS professors can have their own site (as I said in my second comment here). Just not becouse programmers bully them, or overflow with 'too engineering questions' - they don't. But because CS professors prefer to have their own company and do not consider normal programmers to be 'colleagues' or 'peers'. (At least, the ones I knew) Commented Feb 21, 2011 at 20:10
  • Would you consider the guy screwing together a car a peer of his boss, or of a mechanical engineer, or of a physicist? This is the spread we are talking about here. I never claimed anybody "pushed" CS people "out" of SO, I only claim SO can not serve the purpose of talking amongst computer scientists. Programmers have different view and perspectives, that is proven time again. That is helpful if something has to be coded up, otherwise it gets in the way. Commented Feb 21, 2011 at 21:49