This question keeps coming up a lot on Stack Overflow for some reason:
What was Stack Overflow built with?
Some even wondered if Stack Overflow was built in Ruby on Rails. I consider that a compliment!
This question has been covered in some detail in our podcasts, of course, but I know not everyone has time to listen to a bunch of audio footage to find the answer to their question. So, in that spirit, here's the technology "stack" of Stack Overflow, the stuff Jarrod, Geoff, and I used to build it:
| framework | Microsoft ASP.NET |
| language | C# |
| development environment | Visual Studio |
| web framework | ASP.NET MVC |
| browser framework | jQuery |
| database | SQL Server 2008 |
| data access layer | LINQ to SQL |
| source control | Subversion (now Mercurial through Kiln) |
| compare tool | Beyond Compare |
| source control integration | VisualSVN (now, VisualHg) |
We have a few other minor dependencies as well, such as ReCaptcha, DotNetOpenId, and the WMD control (which we subsequently rewrote), but that's about it.