The Fall of Stack Overflow

BenLloydPearson@programming.dev to Programming@programming.dev – 647 points –

Stack Overflow has seen a substantial decline in traffic over the last year that appears to be accelerating. https://observablehq.com/@ayhanfuat/the-fall-of-stack-overflow

253

You are viewing a single comment

ChatGPT isn’t that good at code generation lol.

Doesn't need to be good. Just good enough that people need SO less often. If GitHub Copilot gives a code suggestion, I don't need to look up some syntax or some method I forgot. I'm reminded, and can see that it's correct. No searching online required.

is that what people used stackoverflow for? I google cheatsheets for simple syntax reminders.

What I found stack overflow useful for was 'I have this random bug in this random browser / os combo - here's what hasn't worked, has anyone dealt with it?' - and then hopefully we can all share the misery of this bug until someone figures out the source.

Not sure where to go for that type of thing anymore.

Not exactly why people seek out SO, but it shows up in Google searches and people click. Now there are fewer google searches for that sort of thing.

It's a little more decent than you give credit for. I use it all the time for easy generic subroutines and functions. It struggles a bit with specific, complex requests but is generally pretty versatile as a miniature code assistant. It's good at catching human errors like loops starting or ending at the wrong specified integer, so I use it as a debugging tool.