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Ask HN: Is StackOverflow Dying?

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Re: Ask HN: Is StackOverflow Dying?

#21
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the main use I have for browser addins that block sites in search results.

Which add on do you recommend? I’ve often thought, after clicking on some search result that instantly leads me to a full page splash, “I want to never see that domain again”

Try Kagi, I used a while ago and was amazing, now I default to DDG, I don’t see any cloned content sites or just too few that I don’t notice them.

Re: Ask HN: Is StackOverflow Dying?

#22

Yes I've switched to chatgpt for all my programming questions nowadays because of many reasons: 1. It understands the versions more clearly, it won't generate the code for Bootstrap 2 when my question is about Bootstrap 5 2. Asking follow up questions is easy. So the code didn't work. I tell it that and instantly it tells me what I need to do to fix it (leave missing config file, etc) or gives me an alternate. 3. Its…

I find it hard to believe that ChatGPT is useful beyond trivial things or giving you a lead that you can follow on Google. It's very frequently just plain wrong.

Re: Ask HN: Is StackOverflow Dying?

#23

Yes I've switched to chatgpt for all my programming questions nowadays because of many reasons: 1. It understands the versions more clearly, it won't generate the code for Bootstrap 2 when my question is about Bootstrap 5 2. Asking follow up questions is easy. So the code didn't work. I tell it that and instantly it tells me what I need to do to fix it (leave missing config file, etc) or gives me an alternate. 3. Its…

I may be wrong but isn't chatGPT essentially trained on a web dataset that includes SO? I remember reading something about Common Crawl being used.

Re: Ask HN: Is StackOverflow Dying?

#24

Yes I've switched to chatgpt for all my programming questions nowadays because of many reasons: 1. It understands the versions more clearly, it won't generate the code for Bootstrap 2 when my question is about Bootstrap 5 2. Asking follow up questions is easy. So the code didn't work. I tell it that and instantly it tells me what I need to do to fix it (leave missing config file, etc) or gives me an alternate. 3. Its…

I find it hard to believe that ChatGPT is useful beyond trivial things or giving you a lead that you can follow on Google. It's very frequently just plain wrong.

i'm wrong about most things most of the time. i'm pretty sure i'm still useful.

Re: Ask HN: Is StackOverflow Dying?

#25

Yes I've switched to chatgpt for all my programming questions nowadays because of many reasons: 1. It understands the versions more clearly, it won't generate the code for Bootstrap 2 when my question is about Bootstrap 5 2. Asking follow up questions is easy. So the code didn't work. I tell it that and instantly it tells me what I need to do to fix it (leave missing config file, etc) or gives me an alternate. 3. Its…

7. It doesn't ask pretentiously why would you even want to do that and opine on this being an anti pattern.

I'm so sick of these people on SO.

Re: Ask HN: Is StackOverflow Dying?

#26

Yes I've switched to chatgpt for all my programming questions nowadays because of many reasons: 1. It understands the versions more clearly, it won't generate the code for Bootstrap 2 when my question is about Bootstrap 5 2. Asking follow up questions is easy. So the code didn't work. I tell it that and instantly it tells me what I need to do to fix it (leave missing config file, etc) or gives me an alternate. 3. Its…

Chat gpt will never get smarter though (learn anything new), unless actual people use stack overflow to provide the training data.

The most important comment on SO is the one where the OP says "I did this and that, and can confirm it's working". There is no such data when you only use the chat bot. It's a major problem. Perhaps the solution is a more tailored "stack gpt", where the "conversations" are published along with the human responses.

Re: Ask HN: Is StackOverflow Dying?

#27

I've noticed this trend for years, basically : - for reference I land on official documentation - for issues I usually land on GitHub issues and source code - for random stuff I still hit SO - like some SQL problem, CSS, algorithm implementation - for design stuff I land on blog posts Personally I see stack overflow value reduce with good reference documentation and GitHub issues/open source dev discussions. The fact…

I think you might find answers of problems that are not converted in the docs, I mostly find stuff about JS, Ruby, css or SQL there, but for example for Rust I default to Github, docs.rs or Discord, it might have to do with the community of the tech you are using.

Re: Ask HN: Is StackOverflow Dying?

#28

I've noticed this trend for years, basically : - for reference I land on official documentation - for issues I usually land on GitHub issues and source code - for random stuff I still hit SO - like some SQL problem, CSS, algorithm implementation - for design stuff I land on blog posts Personally I see stack overflow value reduce with good reference documentation and GitHub issues/open source dev discussions. The fact…

I find repo issues generally horrendous to browse/sear h. In particular 'stale issue' bots killing off well written issues with reproduction.

It's not great UX for sure - but the information contained there is usually the best - you can usually get historic context or maintainer views on some issue you've hit.

Re: Ask HN: Is StackOverflow Dying?

#29
Looks like chatgpt was trained on stackoverflow

https://ai.stackexchange.com/questions/38660/was-chatgpt-tra...

I wonder what its contribution was to chatgpt’s ability to answer coding questions. And what happens if chatgpt (or similar) displaces it.

Also interesting is that SO has banned chatgpt from answering but I suspect that will be another shadow “AI vs humans” war.

Re: Ask HN: Is StackOverflow Dying?

#30
A lot of answers are now out of date. Some dangerously so. And its not just 'fast moving' languages. Bash, nginx, docker, gcp, bluetooth. Much of the landscape of these tools has changed since say 2015, but that is where most of the 'core' answers are from.

Many have notes that they are out of date in sub-comments. But its hard to be noticed against a 700 upvote selected top answer.

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