Slant Blog — Tired of being told you aren't constructive? Our approach to subjective programming questions.

It’s not hard to guess why a question like “What is the best CSS preprocessor?” would be closed on StackOverflow. The answer is dependent on your requirements, goals, experience and personal preference, so trying to definitively answer it is difficult. 

But where do you go if you’re trying to decide between mockup tools, Javascript drawing libraries or programming fonts? Given our own experiences and the popularity of closed StackOverflow questions, we’re sure we are not alone in wanting a solution to help us quickly pick between competing approaches, products, and services. So we built it. 

Instead of trying to fit questions with no definitive answer into the typical Q&A structure or deal with the poor signal-to-noise ratio of comment threads, we have developed some new approaches to Q&A:

• We structure the content around the actual options, instead of a list of individual answers to the question. Our “answers” then resemble a standalone analysis that covers the pros/cons of each potential option, letting you find the one that best matches your own needs.
  
• We are fully collaborative. Writing great answers is hard, so it makes sense to combine the efforts of those who share a similar point of view. This also enables our users to easily update and improve content over time. 
• Some people love to discuss and debate. Others just want a high signal-to-noise ratio reading experience. Slant covers both use-cases with a comment thread for each section of the answer that enables on-topic discussion behind the scenes.

By taking this approach we can objectively handle subjectivity - we aren’t actually trying to tell you what the best programming language to learn first is, but what your options are and what they are good for. 

You can checkout our Alpha by either browsing www.slant.co or by reading some of our favorite topics:

We would love to hear any feedback you have, please send it to founders@slant.co or comment on the HN post. 

- The Slant Team

Thanks to Owen, Ryan and Shannon for proof-reading this post and to all our users who have guided the development of the product during the Alpha.