I'll share my own inputs here regarding NullPointer, and why I believe that it's a good way forward.

I've been a member of StackOverflow since beta over a year ago, and if I'm not mistaken I'm the first Filipino to join that site. I've closely followed both the intentions behind the construction of the site, and participated heavily in giving feedback to help it become what it is now -- which eventually lead to the creation of the StackExchange engine that powers NullPointer.

There was one very controversial decision enforced by Jeff Atwood in StackOverflow, which was to prohibit non-English questions from StackOverflow, and his reasoning is that if you allow non-English posts on SO, two things will happen. First, only a very limited number of people would be able to answer that question, but second -- and more importantly -- each language group will become a segregated clique, a sub-community, which would be exclusive/exclusionist by virtue of language barrier.

While I understood Jeff's point of view, let's take that into the context of "fostering/developing a local developer community":

• Not everyone is proficient with English. Let's admit it guys, sa kultura natin, nakakahiya ang hindi marunong mag-Inggles, at nakakahiya na magpost ng barok na Inggles sa isang banyagang website. Kaya imbis na itanong ko yung tanong ko dun, maghahanap na lang ako ng local forum at dun ako magtatanong. O di kaya sa mailing list na lang.
• StackOverflow built a great international developer community (I've gotten to know a lot of foreign devs on Twitter through it) but seriously, in the top 4 pages of StackOverflow users (modesty aside guys -- I just really had a huge headstart) kaunti lang kami na Asian, one being an Iranian genius, a few Israelis of European descent. Almost all of them are white, and all quite proficient in English. Bukod sa mahirap makipagsabayan, any budding Filipino community within the site is -- almost literally -- whitewashed.
• There are soooo many users of StackOverflow that I couldn't find my fellow Filipinos, other than those that I've already met in other fora.
• In SO one of the reasons for closing a question is when a question is "too localized". But there are many valid localized questions out there -- and I'm sure there are many valid localized questions applicable only to the Philippines. Nullpointer provides a venue for those.

I don't see NullPointer.ph as being a competitor or co-equal with StackOverflow but, rather, really just a venue were Pinoy devs can talk with other Pinoy devs, while asking questions relevant to their profession. Admittedly the quality of the technical answers would probably be trumped by SO, but for questions that have localized context, Nullpointer will be an excellent venue.

ako argument ko lang.. its community building.. with a localized community we could hold meetups and gatherings and tutorials more often and much more easier..

its like rounding up the sheeps!

NullPointer.ph was primarily created to promote the growth of the Filipino developer community by providing a platform for all the Filipino developers to exchange knowledge, regardless of programming languages or frameworks being used, company, university, or level of expertise.

NullPointer.ph provides aspiring developers a valuable resource that can fast track their learning by having immediate access to the minds of the experienced.

NullPointer.ph also aims to become a valuable resource for local (and foreign) companies to discover local developer talents that fit their organization through the reputation system.

and also the local time, most of posted questions in SO are asked during daytime, so it is evening in philippines. it's hard to earn rep points in SO when many questions are asked while you are sleeping.

I posted this in a local e-group for the same question.

The real value of nullpointer.ph is that it allows us to glimpse what other people from the philippines are working on. In a sense we have an albeit inaccurate, probably heavily biased (some programming languages tend to attract more social people) sense of the skills we lack cum (http://steve.yegge.googlepages.com/being-the-averagest), and how boring what we are doing compared to other people in our industry/country.

This is actually a very valuable information.

In short I believe that if you don't have tools to expose(for us to explore) this data to us, I think you need to add this. (google analytics like frontend for commonly interesting stuff.)

good work guys hope your site succeeds.

Agree, the local software development community needs this. To broaden the network software devs that we know and we would know (because of this site). Nice work. Looking forward for the success of this site.

It's not just the language, but also the culture.

Tsaka barok din naman ang ibang mga Kano sa kanilang sariling wika!

NullPointer.ph was primarily created to promote the growth of the Filipino developer community by providing a platform for all the Filipino developers to exchange knowledge, regardless of programming languages or frameworks being used, company, university, or level of expertise. (thus I have some SAP related questions).

Gamit ko rin ang NP kesa SO para na rin sa suporta sa pinoy.. (at sa brod ko na panay ang "endorse" nitong site na to ^_^ )

I like the site because you gain companion with the same nationality!

Be Proud to Be Pinoy! :))

May I suggest that this question "Why create NullPointer.ph when there’s already StackOverflow.com?" be placed as a sticky or similar somewhere noticeable. Just so a non-Filipino won't ridicule the website and I can say "Yeah!" to them when they get to read it. :D