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Ask HN: Is StackOverflow Dying?

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Re: Ask HN: Is StackOverflow Dying?

#71

Google doesn't seem to think it's being searched for less relative to previous times https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%2Fm%2F0... SimilarWeb shows them as having a very high proportion of incoming traffic coming from search https://www.similarweb.com/website/stackoverflow.com/#traffi...

I wonder how many people actually add "stackoverflow" to their search queries. For me it's basically never, because it usually will be the first result anyway

Re: Ask HN: Is StackOverflow Dying?

#72

A lot of answers are now out of date.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 Many have notes that they are out of date in sub-comments.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.

They've introduced "Trending (recent votes count more)" sort option recently, but it's not the default (yet?)

Re: Ask HN: Is StackOverflow Dying?

#73
post #7
post #3

Personally the only websites I see displacing SO on Google results are sites that reuse SO content and game Google to get ad revenue.

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

If only google could provide that sort of quality control.

Re: Ask HN: Is StackOverflow Dying?

#74

I think the experts basically got bored and left. I've asked a couple of questions I'd hope would be fairly simple (like how to run a program in cgroups v2), set a big bounty on them, and never got a single useful answer.

I recently asked a question about Java and Maven development differences in VS Code between Windows and Mac OS and got only one answer from someone who didn't actually read the question. So, yeah, it sure seems that way.

Re: Ask HN: Is StackOverflow Dying?

#75
post #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…

I think the thumbs up and down button it shows on each response can be good for that. I think it can already classify similar questions so if it consistently gets a thumbs up or thumbs down it can become smarter too.

Re: Ask HN: Is StackOverflow Dying?

#78
Generally speaking, projects documentation is far better now, I often just land there and usually I'm done. I had yo upgrade a spring 3 project, spring documentation was enough. Also, SO have been quite hostile for me, a newbie for the site who couldn't comment. The probability to have question marked as duplicate was also quite high, with all the downside you know. YMMV, of course.

Re: Ask HN: Is StackOverflow Dying?

#79

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.

Perhaps SO should include version numbers so that you could search for solutions to problems with specific versions or the latest as the case may be. Out of date answers are useful when you need to fix something based on old / un-updated OS and/or software. Not every installation uses the latest versions of everything.

Having a switch that shows answers to specific versions would be a huge help. Even if those were general guesses, or if it was up to the answerer to self-report.
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