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

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I really hope it burns to the ground. One of the most toxic dev "forums" I've seen. I made a point of never clicking their site when looking for answers even if it took me longer.

Damn man, how do you get any work done without it?

I would ask on reddit, IRC channels or read the documentation. I found that I rarely get an updated answer on stack overflow for my area of work.

It is quite toxic but come on, you can't say it isn't an essential tool nowadays. The nitpicky attitudes and downvote barrages kinda enforce good quality answers besides being toxic as hell sometimes

It also enforced that while I was learning I would avoid asking any question there.

That's usually for the better though, basic questions have been answered a million times in a million different ways, yet another post on the same question will just make the original answers harder to find.

People still could be nicer and not attack others personally for not knowing any better, but closing duplicates and redirecting new people to them is a net positive for the platform