The Computer Science proposal is now in its commitment phase.
I strongly think that an own Computer Science site is the only way to go. I have the following reasoning:
- If you look at any computer science university course, you see that programming is about 10% and theory about 20-40%. The rest is somewhere in between.
- SO is mainly used for small every-day programming issues, typically tied to specific languages. In contrast, computer science is more about general questions, e.g. properties that any type system with subtyping has. Therefore, most CS questions will be inherently out of scope on SO.
- cstheory, the only live CS related site, is very narrow in its scope: is is only for theory (maybe 10% of computer science work/research?) and only for researchers (a really exotic breed). Therefore, it is not the right place for most computer scientists. (The question wether its narrowness is a good thing is of no import here).
- A general computer science site could subsume other, more specific proposals that have problems taking off, at least until they have enough traffic to justify moving to an own site (what it maybe what should have been done pre-cstheory, but again, that is beside the point).
Note that I use the term "theory" as a synonym for theoretical computer science, a proper subset of computer science, and not in its popular meaning (i.e. the opposite of "of immediate practical import").
