The "Chinese Software Developer Network" or "China Software Developer Network", (CSDN), operated by Bailian Midami Digital Technology Co., Ltd., is one of the biggest networks of

software developer Software development is the process of conceiving, specifying, designing, Computer programming, programming, software documentation, documenting, software testing, testing, and Software bugs, bug fixing involved in creating and maintaining applic ...

s in

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

. CSDN provides Web forums, blog hosting, IT news, and other services. CSDN has about 10 million registered users and is the largest developer community in China.

Services offered

Web forum An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are often longer than one line of text, and are at least temporar ...

s with a ranking system and similar topics *

Blog A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...

hostin

with 69,484 bloggers at April 7, 2005 * Document Cente

a selection of blog articles * IT New

* IT job huntin

and trainin

services * Online bookmark servic

Web Forum

The CSDN community website is where Chinese software programmers seek advice. A poster describes a problem, posts it in the forum with a price in CSDN points, and then waits for replies. On some popular boards, a poster will get a response in a few hours, if not minutes. Most replies are short but enough to point out the mistake and give possible solutions. Some posts include code and may grow to several pages. The majority of posts are written in

Simplified Chinese Simplification, Simplify, or Simplified may refer to: Mathematics Simplification is the process of replacing a mathematical expression by an equivalent one, that is simpler (usually shorter), for example * Simplification of algebraic expressions, ...

, although

Traditional Chinese A tradition is a belief or behavior (folk custom) passed down within a group or society with symbolic meaning or special significance with origins in the past. A component of cultural expressions and folklore, common examples include holidays or ...

and

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

posts are not uncommon

Topics are mainly IT related and focused on programming, but political and life topics are also active. The forums were closed for two weeks in June 2004. This was likely for political reasons, because many political words, such as the names of political leaders and organizations, have been banned in posts since then. However, political discussions with intentional misspellings are still active.

Blog

The site hosts many IT

blog A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...

s, but the large number of bloggers makes the server slow. In December 2005,

Baidu Baidu, Inc. ( ; , meaning "hundred times") is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in Internet-related services and products and artificial intelligence (AI), headquartered in Beijing's Haidian District. It is one of the la ...

rated CSDN as one of the top Chinese blog service provider

Collaboration with Microsoft

CSDN started cooperation with

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

in 2002, and several Microsoft technical support staff have provided their support in CSDN forums since then. CSDN is also a major source of Chinese

Microsoft Most Valuable Professional The Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award is given by Microsoft to "technology experts who passionately share their knowledge with the community". They are awarded to people who "actively share their ... technical expertise with the dif ...

Criticism

Some people have complained about the CPU-consuming

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. T ...

page format of the web forum. Other have complained about its unfriendly interface in browsers other than

Internet Explorer Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical user interface, graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft which was used in the Microsoft Wind ...

. Nevertheless, the website receives 1.3 million hits every day, according to Ale

{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070312080856/http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&range=1y&size=medium&compare_sites=&y=r&url=community.csdn.net#top , date=2007-03-12 .

User information leakage

In December 2011, the information of 6,000,000 CSDN users was reported to be leak

https://web.archive.org/web/20181003220835/https://www.rcesecurity.com/2011/12/china-software-developer-network-csdn-leaked-6-million-user-data/]. This serious security problem was caused by storing users' passwords in clear text without any hashing/encryption in the CSDN database.

External links

Official website
of Bailian Midami Digital Technology Co., Ltd.

* ttps://www.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9310.2005.00418.x Sources of knowledge acquisition for Chinese software engineers Chinese social networking websites Knowledge markets Software developer communities