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Inside The Decline of Stack Exchange

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Re: Inside The Decline of Stack Exchange

#151

Post by Zamicol »

sanderjd wrote: post #137
layer8 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The benefit of “sifting through answers” on StackOverflow is that you learn about different perspectives and about possible caveats. You tend to get a more complete picture. At least for me, that makes human-discussed content much more valuable. It’s a bit like reading HN comment threads vs. asking an LLM for its take on a submission.

In theory this is right... But in practice I don't find that SO actually does a particularly good job of this. But nothing really does, unfortunately. When I want this kind of nuance, I end up digging through threads in all kinds of different places (including but not limited to SO) for ages.

I agree. Too often on Stack Overflow are incorrect answers upvoted, and correct answers are absent or buried.

With ChatGPT, when it provides incorrect answers I've had good luck explaining the error. ChatGPT usually revises answers into useful output.

Re: Inside The Decline of Stack Exchange

#152

Post by gostsamo »

valine wrote: post #33
gostsamo wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can generalize it to every market where the proxy owns the relationship with the client and captures the generated value. UI or whatever, if ChatGPT kills Stack Overflow, we will be in a situation where the shared knowledge will be at the level of 2021 and everything later will be with declining quality due to lack of data. I'd say that it is in OpenAI's interest to pay for SO and Redit so that they don't kill th…

You’re assuming the bulk of ChatGPT’s coding knowledge comes from stack overflow. I suspect training directly on code bases and documentation is more important.

not every product has good documentation nor the code is self explanatory. SO fills in the gap between a requirement and its translation in code. Only OpenAI can say for sure how important is SO for them, but I doubt that it is insignificant.

Re: Inside The Decline of Stack Exchange

#153

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

sanderjd wrote: post #140
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I concede that this is an entirely fair point, and one that I did not consider (mostly because we're on "Hacker News".

Ironically, I think this is more true of "Hacker News" than on other more programming-focused forums. I would describe the ethos here as "innovative problem-solving using computer technology". Whether that involves programming is totally beside the point. It has largely been the case since this site launched that most of the solutions do involve programming, but there's no reason they must . I think lots of non-progr…

What use of computer technology can you imagine that does not involve programming?

Re: Inside The Decline of Stack Exchange

#154

Post by shadowgovt »

Author seems to be doing a lot of reasoning from a hockey-stick graph that's less than a year old. I'd give it time to see if that line keeps trending upward or the line crashes (as hype gives way to "Wait this tool is unreliable", which it may).

Re: Inside The Decline of Stack Exchange

#155

Post by d0mine »

dotnet00 wrote: post #122
the_jeremy wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you ask a bad question on SE (leave "bad" to be defined separately), you waste time of people who try to answer it, and of people who stumble across it hoping that it relates to them and solves their problem. If you ask a bad question to ChatGPT, you waste no one's time but your own. If answering SE was a job where you got paid, I would expect a lot more hand-holding (and some amount of kindness, to keep the reven…

In those cases it's easy enough to just move on to another question rather than shut down the discussion. It's not like anyone's being forced to answer.

The primary (95+%) use case for Stack Overflow is being the destination for a web search. "Bad" questions make signal/noise ratio worse.

Re: Inside The Decline of Stack Exchange

#156

Post by sanderjd »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #153
sanderjd wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically, I think this is more true of "Hacker News" than on other more programming-focused forums. I would describe the ethos here as "innovative problem-solving using computer technology". Whether that involves programming is totally beside the point. It has largely been the case since this site launched that most of the solutions do involve programming, but there's no reason they must . I think lots of non-progr…

What use of computer technology can you imagine that does not involve programming?

Cobbling together SaaS's, "no-code", building stuff using "prompt engineering" with AIs instead of writing code, innovative business models using pre-existing software, etc. etc.

Re: Inside The Decline of Stack Exchange

#157

Post by sanderjd »

Zamicol wrote: post #151
sanderjd wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In theory this is right... But in practice I don't find that SO actually does a particularly good job of this. But nothing really does, unfortunately. When I want this kind of nuance, I end up digging through threads in all kinds of different places (including but not limited to SO) for ages.

I agree. Too often on Stack Overflow are incorrect answers upvoted, and correct answers are absent or buried. With ChatGPT, when it provides incorrect answers I've had good luck explaining the error. ChatGPT usually revises answers into useful output.

Yes, it's the back and forth that I highly value, and that is entirely absent (indeed, impossible) on SO.

I am frequently saying things like "no, that's not right, ..." or "no, that's not what I meant, ..." or "could you keep this part, which seems good, but replace the rest with a different approach like ...".

Think how rude it would be to micro-manage a volunteer answer on SO!

Re: Inside The Decline of Stack Exchange

#158

Post by at_a_remove »

robertlagrant wrote: post #127
at_a_remove wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you have filtered feedback that is polite, thoughtful, and clear?

Good question :-) You start by remembering that a lot of people have constant praise - they bought a new Thing™? "Well done you!" Say their friends. Or "You look sensational today!" Or whatever it is. Hyper-positive praise is very common, and any hint of anything else may well be jarring. Any improvement suggestions might need to either get thrown in the bin (even if they're valid and simple) or filtered through thei…

I guess what I am getting at is that, in this specific instance, I'm not sure there is anything to do. You either send it or not. It was polite, it was clear, and so on. Tonally, it was about as good as you can expect. So what is there to filter other than send/not-send?

Re: Inside The Decline of Stack Exchange

#159

Post by mmcdermott »

sanderjd wrote: post #135
laichzeit0 wrote: post #31

Some of my most recent ChatGPT interactions: 34.223.203.0/28 what is the end ip of this range? Write python code to strip out characters that are not alphanumeric or spaces How do make FastAPI not return nulls in the response model when values don't exist? Rewrite this javascript to python Braindead stuff that I would normally lookup on StackOverflow but ChatGPT gives me the actual answer instead of me having to sift…

I use chatgpt (and copilot) for this same kind of stuff. I don't at all think it's making me dumber. I'm spending more of my time learning and doing the far more interesting and creative domain-specific parts of my work. That is, it's making me smarter by freeing up time to focus on things that matter a lot more. Just like any other tool I've learned to use to automate away drudgery in the past.

The eternal paradox of tools is that they make those who don't need the tool more efficient and tend to inhibit learning in those who do need them.

Take a pocket calculator for example. If you already know arithmetic, calculators make you more efficient, but they are a terrible way to teach arithmetic.

Re: Inside The Decline of Stack Exchange

#160

Post by sanderjd »

mmcdermott wrote: post #159
sanderjd wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use chatgpt (and copilot) for this same kind of stuff. I don't at all think it's making me dumber. I'm spending more of my time learning and doing the far more interesting and creative domain-specific parts of my work. That is, it's making me smarter by freeing up time to focus on things that matter a lot more. Just like any other tool I've learned to use to automate away drudgery in the past.

The eternal paradox of tools is that they make those who don't need the tool more efficient and tend to inhibit learning in those who do need them. Take a pocket calculator for example. If you already know arithmetic, calculators make you more efficient, but they are a terrible way to teach arithmetic.

Yes I totally agree, and I think this is the hard part. I absolutely worry about this for people just entering software engineering. I rely on "taste" a huge amount to figure out whether I'm being told something useful or worthless, and I developed that intuition through years of experience not having an AI to ask.
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