As per their 2008 blog post, they are built on ASP. Net with other MS technologies. I am planning to build something like SO and was wondering what web framework to go with?
The reason for ASP.NET is that it was what Atwood and Spolsky knew. It also helped that they knew SQL-Server scales well vertically. It was a good choice then and would be a good choice today.
Stack Overflow was able to grow huge because it was built on the Microsoft stack. For a long time it ran on a single database server...a big box with lots and lots of disks and RAM. Because it was a business from the beginning, they were willing to pay for sound technology. They could do so because they were adequately capitalized.
I'm thinking of using Ruby On Rails though worried about scaling problems. I am already having problems with our another website which get just hundred thousand unique visitors only.
I will explore some other frameworks too. Most likely I will go with mongo rather than postgres.
What's amazing is that .NET has only gotten better since then. I remember hearing about Atwood talk about tools he built himself that are more or less baked into the ASP.NET now.
There are two types of side projects. One you do because what you’re building is cool. The other because you’re interested in learning some tech.
If you’re focused just on the thing you’re building use whatever reasonably modern thing you want. I’d probably use flask, MySQL, and avoid a JavaScript framework as long as I could... but that’s just what I’d work fastest in. Do whatever you are most productive in.
Stack Overflow was able to grow huge because it was built on the Microsoft stack. For a long time it ran on a single database server...a big box with lots and lots of disks and RAM. Because it was a business from the beginning, they were willing to pay for sound technology. They could do so because they were adequately capitalized.
Good luck.