I'm going to chime in with an answer here partly because as one of the webmasters of this site, it might provide some interesting insights to the more non-technical users of this new website.

For anyone who is wondering, the reference to StackOverflow in the question is a reference to StackOverflow.com - the original "experiment" that led to the software that runs Inward Quest.

In the space of less than a year, StackOverflow has gone from nothing to, arguably, the most dominant website in the world for computer software engineers to exchange information.

I've been an enthusiastic user myself of StackOverflow for several months which is why I leapt at the opportunity (when it became available) to apply the same idea to what has now become Inward Quest.

Back to your question, I can't help but smile at your observations of software engineers. Among other things, I write computer software myself professionally though I don't have the typical software engineering background.

But I do find myself working with them for periods of time. So your astute observations about typical software engineers are something that I find highly accurate, and quite amusing as a result. Of course, it's a generalization but there is a certain mentality like that that does exist.

From my point of view, there is little more "spiritual" in this world right now than these miraculous virtual technologies we human beings are creating.

The Internet has become the nervous system of Planet Earth whereby people can now congregate (virtually) not through location but through the thoughts they agree upon.

And as for computer software itself, I find the concept amazing. Whereas a mechanical engineer might start construction on something physical and the outside world can gradually see what is taking shape, a software engineer is literally creating nothing at all.

They are creating templates to rearrange various bits in the memory of the computer to achieve the illusion of something useful. But there is no physical end-product. Yet there is still something of value within that rearrangement of bits in that, for example, we can ultimately create meaningful virtual meeting places (like Inward Quest).

So what's going in the creation of computer software?

My personal belief is that this is the closest thing that exists right now to the ability to download "human thought"...that's how I view books too actually...downloaded repositories of human thought but software takes it to another level. A book is a rather static concept but a software program adds a dynamic element to it. Writing software, for me, is a modern-day version of ancient alchemy.

As most software engineers know, there is something magical (and for me, mystical) about being able to focus one's mind, visualize the design of the software (which is only a human-constructed paradigm for communicating with a machine - the machine doesn't care how you "talk" to it), implement it and watch those ethereal thoughts create something that others can gain value from.

And yet physically all that took place was the software engineer bashing their fingers onto a set of computer keys for several days, weeks or months...beyond that it was pure creation through focused thought in the mind of the engineer.

It's really a human-approximated version of the universal manifestation process, is it not?

Anyway, I'll stop rambling now. :)