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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SO is a shithole, just like Reddit. All the work is done by volunteers. When it was time to cash out with the platform, they also did several things to fuck with their community. I've contributed quite a bit to the trilogy sites, and served as a moderator. I regret every second of it. But at least a few people got rich in the process.

I don't get why programmers, especially ones actually working on open source projects, insist on using proprietary services. Stack Overflow is one, also GitHub.

It's unfortunate, but the reality is that many of the proprietary services are... free, convenient, and where the people are.

Most projects do not have a lot of funding, so it makes sense to use low cost platforms with the least amount of friction. I think most developers are aware of the risks and trade-offs, but make a pragmatic decision to use these proprietary services b/c the benefits for them outweigh the costs.

If you decide to start a project but somehow decide to self-host a git repository, ticketing service, CICD pipelines, etc... You no longer work on said project and instead you're the system administrator of half a dozen services.

...or you register an account with the likes of GitHub/gitlab, and stay coding right away.

Because there are no free and quality alternatives.

I used to go to SO and really liked it. I haven't been in a long time though and didn't know about this. What are your thoughts about Quora? Seems similar to me.

I don't really have any Insights into Quora. I know StackExchange hardliner always joked about the site and felt like SE is better. I joined that because I thought it was fun to feel superior, but I don't even have an account on that site