Stack Overflow is almost dead • Hacker News Board

Re: Stack Overflow is almost dead

#281

Post by zahlman » Tue, May 27, 2025, 7:59 PM UTC

imglorp wrote: post #74

panstromek wrote: post #8

Doesn't feel like the AI is the main driver. Many things changed over time - dev tools got better, editors got smarter, compilers got better error messages, various primary resources improved, tutorial websites, courses and youtube boomed. Another point of course is that each new question is more and more likely to be already answered. At some point the site pretty much covers most of what is to be answered.

> each new question is more and more likely to be already answered Yeah, except for when there should be current answers. Most of computing is in constant flux. There's a mountain of 10+ year old answers that simply don't apply any more.

> except for when there should be current answers.

Yes.

They belong on the existing question - unless the existing question is poorly asked and the new one is better asked.

New answers can, by default, be added at any time - and should, if existing answers are actually out of date rather than simply being old. (Many 10+ year old answers really do still apply.)

Asking the question again is not how the site is designed or intended to work.

Re: Stack Overflow is almost dead

#282

Post by zahlman » Tue, May 27, 2025, 8:01 PM UTC

simonsarris wrote: post #139

I used to answer questions a lot, by around 2013 I had answered maybe ~12% of all HTML canvas questions ever asked. To me it declined a lot sooner, 2014 really does feel like the right inflection point. There was a belief, sometimes unstated but often explicit, that no more (serious) discussion is really to be had, and further wondering how can one stop people from asking. It became difficult to discuss anything if t…

> There was a belief, sometimes unstated but often explicit, that no more (serious) discussion is really to be had, and further wondering how can one stop people from asking. It became difficult to discuss anything if there was even something vaguely related asked before.

There is nothing to do with unstated belief here.

It is explicit policy that we don't have discussion at all.

We have answers to questions.

Which is why there's a question (explicitly labelled as such, and not just "help me") at the top of the page, and every post below it is labelled as an answer (and is explicitly not a response to anything else but is simply there to answer the question).

Re: Stack Overflow is almost dead

#283

Post by zahlman » Tue, May 27, 2025, 8:03 PM UTC

exsomet wrote: post #70

Stack Overflow was a question and answer site that discouraged people from asking or answering questions. LLMs probably sped things up, but it seems like it was inevitable that it would fall into disuse and eventually be overtaken one way or another.

Most of what people "ask" on Stack Overflow is simply not a question per the intent and design of the site.

https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/284236/why-is-can-s...

Re: Stack Overflow is almost dead

#284

Post by nbelyh » Wed, May 28, 2025, 1:44 AM UTC

OutOfHere wrote: post #87

Just how is 25K new questions a month dead? Even if it gradually asymptomates to just 1K, the answers to them are enough to continue serving as a critical base layer of high-quality training data for LLMs. Let's say for the sake of argument that 95% of humanity perished. Is humanity then dead? It isn't.

It just won't survive with 1k questions per month from the financial point of view. The hosting, the team, etc. Also, there is GitHub, where you can get high-quality answers directly from the authors of the component or library you are using and high-quality training data.

Re: Stack Overflow is almost dead

#285

Post by stormblooperz » Wed, May 28, 2025, 11:18 AM UTC

zahlman wrote: post #275

stormblooperz wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry you've been swore at, that's obviously not on. I guess I would say: look at the big picture, Stack Overflow is almost dead. It's a bit like driving a car off a cliff because there's a post-it note on the wheel that describes that purpose of the car as to go inexorably in this one cardinal direction. At least the standards are established and thoroughly documented! The document objectively exists! Also: I kn…

> not because they misunderstand the purpose of the site, but because of the unkindness and nonsensical nature of the moderation. I have read countless examples of this sort of thing, with people attesting to me that the people who wrote it do in fact understand the purpose of the site. I have yet to see a single example where I was convinced they actually did. They very frequently write in terms that imply complete…

So you have paid attention and read countless examples of people's experiences with Stack Overflow, but have concluded that, in fact, they are all in the wrong?

Frankly, it just doesn't matter at this point. The time to have done something about it was several years ago, it's a lost cause at this point. Whether you reflect and recognise your part in that, and learn and grow from it, is up to you.