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Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

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Re: Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

#161

Post by dmurray »

lokar wrote: post #154
ggregoire wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. I look for answers about 10 times a day I'd say and in 90% of the cases I found what I was looking for, in a few seconds, for free. I also post answers when I found old questions and the answers are outdated or not complete. I know it helps other people cause I usually get 1-10 upvotes / year for those answers on old questions. Mostly about python, sql, postgres, js, react, aws and docker, so popular topic…

I’m curious what you are doing that leads you to lookup stuff 10 times a day.

I'm curious what kind of programming job you could have where you look up stuff less than 10 times a day.

Re: Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

#162

Post by bastardoperator »

trey-jones wrote: post #147
bastardoperator wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who cares, people with homework need help too. They're beginners so asking them to formulate a perfect question or conduct research is basically a non-starter. If the barrier to entry is become a professional first, it's no wonder why the company and its user base are shrinking.

I think "professionals who can't figure this obscure things out" is the best use-case for SO, really. Perhaps being a professional is something to be required. I'm speaking only from my own experience. I have only ever asked a handful of questions on SO (going back to about 2011), and that's because I spend hours and hours trying to figure it out first. So yes, I think I do expect that of other questioners as well. "…

I can agree with you to an extent, but the model doesn't scale and they're getting beat by alternatives that are seemingly better for the majority.

Re: Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

#163

Post by crakhamster01 »

trenchgun wrote: post #158
crakhamster01 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is ChatGPT a competitor? I always viewed LLMs in this context as an interface for SO. They're not contributing new answers/code, right?

It bootstraps from the internet, including SO, but in fact they do have coders in house teaching it stuff: https://www.semafor.com/article/01/27/2023/openai-has-hired-...

Oh wow that's interesting, thanks for sharing! I thought that the value in today's LLMs comes from the wealth of "free" crowd-sourced answers online. It seems like OpenAI is trying to create more source material specifically for "basic coding", though I wonder how cost-effective that is in practice. Or effective in general, for that matter.

Re: Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

#164

Post by Isthatablackgsd »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #70
kalleboo wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even when there aren’t better sources I’ve found that the SO results are just all outdated and don’t cover any newer stuff. Like they’ve lost all their authors or at least they’re not being indexed by Google.

A lot of people say to use Reddit instead of StackOverflow, but IMO Reddit is even worse for this than SO, since most old threads are locked.

What I found those information in Reddit is that they are current with the information than SO. The results from SO are dated back to '08 to '17 and they are often outdated. If the thread is locked in Reddit, they can create a new post and add the link to locked thread in the comment and seeking for more solutions, they are often keep it up. Compared to SO which will locked it up for being "dupe".

This is particular annoying when it comes to CLI tools. Often the search top result will show outdated SO post that the command arguements are depreciated, it took me hours to find this out after couldn't figure out why the command are not working. If I search the problem with site:reddit.com, the answer are usually relevant and current with a working command.

SO's overaggressive moderation are preventing the new information from being relevant. That's why people flocks to GitHub, Discord, Reddit, and Steam forums because they don't share the SO moderation philosophy.

Re: Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

#165

Post by d357r0y3r »

Stack Overflow is really a relic of the past at this point.

Libraries and tools change so fast these days, I almost never find what I need on SO. You've got to go into Github issues, get in a discord, or go to some other source to actually find root causes. If you do find something, it's likely to be from 8 years ago, and it's rarely still the "best" answer.

I think developer troubleshooting will be reinvented, and almost nothing that SO has built is needed for troubleshooting in 2024/2025. Some leaner or more capable solution will come along that fully leans into LLM-supported search.

Re: Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

#166

Post by tarokun-io »

SO was such a great tool when it was created and for a long time, but now we have so many options. Collaboration improved in every front, both due to tech improvements and to becoming the default human behavior in all of IT, rather than minorities. And the whole industry has better standards now.

Re: Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

#167

Post by [deleted] »

charlie0 wrote: post #157
antimora wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For finding answers, Stack Overflow may be useful, but for posting questions, it is not. I ceased posting questions a while ago due to the aggressive moderation, which often labeled my questions as duplicates or too common. I was very upset with the direction Stack Overflow had taken, as it seemed to embody the very criticisms it had once had about forums. The Stack Overflow community has lost its vibrancy and has be…

If they didn't moderate aggressively, they would probably end up with a bunch of duplicate questions. I really like the fact there's not a ton of dups on SO. ie, see other help sites. They also have a high standard for those questions, to the point where it will take 10+ minutes to post a good question. I don't ask questions either, mainly because I don't want to spend 30+ minutes writing a good question AND that's a…

[deleted]

Re: Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

#168

Post by busterarm »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #101
xmprt wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That might be true but it's a very nihilistic way to look at things. I believe SO had many more successful years ahead of it but decisions taken by the company and moderators sped that process up.

Criticism of the company has been done to death, but I'd be interested to hear criticism of the moderator actions. (I'm not even sure which actions you and the grandparent are referring to.)

The moderators seemed to collectively go insane with maintaining the purity of their individual fiefdoms.

Questions and answers both got moderated out of existence with high frequency with it being clear that the moderator didn't understand either. I remember this behavior becoming rampant throughout the community around 2012 and the moderators being incredibly toxic in Meta SO. I removed my profile and never looked back then.

Re: Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

#169

Post by ahoka »

dmurray wrote: post #161
lokar wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m curious what you are doing that leads you to lookup stuff 10 times a day.

I'm curious what kind of programming job you could have where you look up stuff less than 10 times a day.

Something they are actually competent doing, I suppose.

Re: Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

#170

Post by bryanlarsen »

antimora wrote: post #137
bryanlarsen wrote: post #103

Am I the only one that still finds SO to be quite useful? If I paste an error message into Google, it's still quite likely that the SO answer is the best one. And if it doesn't, I contribute an answer if/when I eventually find it because I still think I get more out of SO than I put in. I've received 21 necromancer badges doing that.

For finding answers, Stack Overflow may be useful, but for posting questions, it is not. I ceased posting questions a while ago due to the aggressive moderation, which often labeled my questions as duplicates or too common. I was very upset with the direction Stack Overflow had taken, as it seemed to embody the very criticisms it had once had about forums. The Stack Overflow community has lost its vibrancy and has be…

Counterpoint: I've never had a question moderated as duplicate, and I've been using StackOverflow for 15 years.
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