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Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

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Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#271

Post by davchana »

0xfaded wrote: post #225

I once published a method for finding the closest distance between an ellipse and a point on SO: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/22959698/distance-from-g... I consider it the most beautiful piece of code I've ever written and perhaps my one minor contribution to human knowledge. It uses a method I invented, is just a few lines, and converges in very few iterations. People used to reach out to me all the time with…

I too, around 2012 was too much active on so, in fact, it had that counter thing continuously xyz days most of my one liners, or snippets for php are still the highest voted answers. Even now when sometimes I google something, and an answer comes up, I realize its me who asked the same question and answered it too.

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#272

Post by kurtis_reed »

etamponi wrote: post #49

I spent the last 14 days chasing an issue with a Spark transform. Gemini and Claude were exceptionally good at giving me answers that looked perfectly reasonable: none of them worked, they were almost always completely off-road. Eventually I tried with something else, and found a question on stackoverflow, luckily with an answer. That was the game changer and eventually I was able to find the right doc in the Spark (…

Q&A isn't going away. There's still GitHub Discussions.

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#273

Post by vbezhenar »

8organicbits wrote: post #51

It's unfortunate that SO hasn't found a way to leverage LLMs. Lots of questions benefit from some initial search, which is hard enough that moderators likely felt frustrated with actual duplicates, or close enough duplicates, and LLMs seem able to assist. However I hope we don't lose the rare gem answers that SO also had, those expert responses that share not just a programming solution but deeper insight.

I think that SO leveraging LLMs implicitly. Like I'll always ask LLM first, that's the easiest option. And I'll only come to SO if LLM fails to answer.

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#274

Post by Bratmon »

elevation wrote: post #88
Bratmon wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But surely transmitting information to actual SO is just as forbidden? And if you're making an internal-only site, it doesn't really need to be name-brand SO.

Stack overflow was useful with a fairly sanitized search like “mysql error 1095”. Agentic LLMs do there best work when able to access your entire repository or network environment for context, which is impossible to sanitize. For a season, private environments will continue to be able to use SO. But as LLMs capture all the good questions and keep them private, public SO will become less and less relevant. It’s sad to…

I just typed the literal phrase "mysql error 1095" into ChatGPT with no context, and it gave an answer that was no worse than SO for the same search.

No need to give it anything about my repository, network environment, or even a complete sentence.

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#275

Post by viraptor »

why-o-why wrote: post #248
Alupis wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People in this thread are missing another key component in the decline of StackOverflow - the more experienced you become, the less useful it is. The harder the problem, the less engagement it gets. People who spend hours working on your issue are rewarded with a single upvote. Meanwhile, "how do I concat a string" gets dozens or hundreds of upvotes. The incentive/reward structure punished experienced folks with chal…

Wasn't there a "bounty" program where if it had a lot of views but no answers, the answer rewarded more internet ego points?

Not automatically. You could add a bounty using your own points if the question didn't get an accepted answer in 2 days.

Which is kinda cool, but also very biased for older contributors. I could drop thousands of points bounty without thinking about it, but new users couldn't afford the attention they needed.

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#276

Post by esafak »

stavros wrote: post #167
esafak wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Models are check-pointed. You can save one you like and use it forever.

Doesn't help when the ads are a layer above the model.

There are open source models you yourself or a trusted third party can run. No ads.

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#277

Post by braiamp »

garganzol wrote: post #186
culi wrote: post #130

I guess I'm the only one that was a fan of SO's moderation. I never got too deep into it (answered some TypeScript questions). But the intention to reduce duped questions made a lot of sense to me. I like the idea of a "living document" where energy is focused on updating and improving answers to old versions of the same question. As a user looking for answers it means I can worry less about finding some other variat…

The problem with duplicate questions is that they weren't duplicates at all, and mods weren't competent enough to tell a difference.

Show me one that was closed by a moderator. Just one. And I will tell you exactly what happened.

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#278

Post by magicalhippo »

Philip-J-Fry wrote: post #260
zero_shift wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh I love that game! (At least I think it's a game) You ask how to do X. Member M asks why you want to do X. Because you want to do Y. Well!? why do you want to do Y?? Because Y is on T and you can't do K so you need a Z Well! Well! Why do you even use Z?? Clearly J is the way it is now recommended! Because Z doesn't work on a FIPS environment. ... Can you help me? ... I just spent 15 minutes explaining X, Y and Z. D…

To be fair, asking why someone wants to do something is often a good question. Especially in places like StackOverflow where the people asking questions are often inexperienced. I see it all the time professionally too. People ask "how do I do X" and I tell them. Then later on I find out that the reason they're asking is because they went down a whole rabbit hole they didn't need to go down. An analogy I like is imag…

The well known XY problem[1].

I spent years on IRC, first getting help and later helping others. I found out myself it was very useful to ask such questions when someone I didn't know asked a somewhat unusual question.

The key is that if you're going to probe for Y, you usually need to be fairly experienced yourself so you can detect the edge cases, where the other person has a good reason.

One approach I usually ended up going for when it appeared the other person wasn't a complete newbie was to first explain that I think they're trying to solve the wrong problem or otherwise going against the flow, and that there's probably some other approach that's much better.

Then I'd follow up with something like "but if you really want to proceed down this rrack, this is how I'd go about it", along with my suggestion.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_problem

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#279

Post by vbezhenar »

chrsw wrote: post #55

For me, my usage of SO started declining as LLMs rose. Occasionally I still end up there, usually because a chat response referenced a SO thread. I was willing to put up with the toxicity as long as the site still had technical value for me. But still, machines leave me wanting. Where do people go to ask real humans novel technical questions these days?

> Where do people go to ask real humans novel technical questions these days?

I don't think such generic place exists. I just do my own research or abandon the topic. I think that in big companies you probably could use some internal chats or just ask some smart guy directly? I don't have that kind of connections and all online communities are full of people whose skill is below mine, so it makes little sense to ask something. I still do sometimes, but rarely receive competent answer.

If you have some focused topic like a question about small program, of course you can just use github issues or email author directly. But if you have some open question, probably SO is the only generic platform out there.

To put it differently, find some experts and ask which online place to the visit to help strangers. Most likely they just don't do it.

So for me, personally, LLMs are the saviour. With enough forth and back I can research any topic that doesn't require very deep expertise. Sure, access to an actual expert willing to guide me would be better, but I just don't have that luxury.

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#280

Post by braiamp »

eterm wrote: post #24
vintagedave wrote: post #4

Do I read that correctly — it is close to zero today?! I used to think SO culture was killing it but it really may have been AI after all.

It's surely both. Look at the newest questions: https://stackoverflow.com/questions?tab=Newest Most questions have negative karma. Even if somehow that is "deserved", that's not a healthy ecosystem. All that is left of SI are clueless questioners and bitter, jaded responders. SO worked when "everyone" was new to it, and they felt energized to ask questions ( even "basic" questions, because they hadn't been asked befo…

Most? 3 out of 15 is most? What's wrong with youngsters today?!
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