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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

#641

Post by cpa »

scirob wrote: post #622
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…

Has anyone tried building a modern Stack Overflow that's actually designed for AI-first developers? The core idea: question gets asked → immediately shows answers from 3 different AI models. Users get instant value. Then humans show up to verify, break it down, or add production context. But flip the reputation system: instead of reputation for answers, you get it for catching what's wrong or verifying what works. "T…

Am I reading an AI trying to trick me into becoming its subordinate?

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#642

Post by mcintyre1994 »

scirob wrote: post #622
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…

Has anyone tried building a modern Stack Overflow that's actually designed for AI-first developers? The core idea: question gets asked → immediately shows answers from 3 different AI models. Users get instant value. Then humans show up to verify, break it down, or add production context. But flip the reputation system: instead of reputation for answers, you get it for catching what's wrong or verifying what works. "T…

I think this could be really cool, but the tricky thing would be knowing when to use it instead of just asking the question directly to whichever AI. It’s hard to know that you’ll benefit from the extra context and some human input unless you already have a pretty good idea about the topic.

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#643

Post by lblume »

anonu wrote: post #570

So the question for me is how important was SO to training LLMs? Because now that the SO is basically no longer being updated, we've lost the new material to train on? Instead, we need to train on documentation and other LLM output. I'm no expert on this subject but it seems like the quality of LLMs will degrade over time.

It has often been claimed, and even shown, that training LLMs on their own outputs will degrade the quality over time. I myself find it likely that on well-measurable domains, RLVR improvements will dominate "slop" decreases in capability when training new models.

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#644

Post by OJFord »

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 don't disagree completely by any means, it's an interesting point, but in your SO answer you already point to your blog post explaining it in more detail, so isn't that the answer, you'd just blog about it and not bother with SO?

Then AI finding it (as opposed to already trained well enough on it, I suppose) will still point to it as did your SO answer.

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#645

Post by noduerme »

This is horrifying.

Given the fact that when I need a question answered I usually refer to S.O., but more recently have taken suggestions from LLM models that were obviously trained on S.O. data...

And given the fact that all other web results for "how do you change the scroll behavior on..." or "SCSS for media query on..." all lead to a hundred fake websites with pages generated by LLMs based on old answers.

Destroying S.O. as a question/answer source leaves only the LLMs to answer questions. That's why it's horrific.

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#646

Post by lobsterthief »

__patchbit__ wrote: post #624
oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To some extent that was Stack Overflow Yup, that was always very much the plan, from the earliest days. Shame it soured a bit, but since the content is all freely reusable, maybe something can be built atop the ashes?

There is https://grokipedia.com which encourages you to suggest an article and you may submit improvements to an existing article.

This is _not_ at all the same thing. Grok just ripped off Wikipedia as its base and then applied a biased spin to it. Check out the entry on Grok owner Elon Musk; it praises his accomplishments and completely omits or downplays most of his better-known controversies.

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#647

Post by hnmullany »

I think one of the phenomenon that people haven't mentioned is that the question space was heavily colonized by 2016.

I was one of the top 30 or 50 answerers for the SVG tag on SO, and I found that the question flow started to degrade around 2016, because so many of the questions asked had been answered (and answered well) already.

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#648

Post by noduerme »

scirob wrote: post #622
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…

Has anyone tried building a modern Stack Overflow that's actually designed for AI-first developers? The core idea: question gets asked → immediately shows answers from 3 different AI models. Users get instant value. Then humans show up to verify, break it down, or add production context. But flip the reputation system: instead of reputation for answers, you get it for catching what's wrong or verifying what works. "T…

Oh, so it wasn't bad enough to spot bad human answers as an expert on Stack Overflow... now humans should spend their time spotting bad AI answers? How about a model where you ask a human and no AI input is allowed, to make sure that everyone has everyone else's full attention?

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#649

Post by knolan »

keepamovin wrote: post #408
erikig wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The various admonitions to publish to a personal blog, while encouraging, don't really get at the 0xfaded's request which I'd summarize as follows: With no one asking questions these technical questions publicly, where, how and on what public platform will technical people find the problems that need solving so they can exercise their creativity for the benefit of all?

Clearly we need something in between the fauxpen-access of journals and the wilde west of the blogosphere, probably. Why wouldn't the faded ox publish in a paper? Idk, but I guess we need things similar to those circulars that British royal society members used to send to each other...except not reserved for a club. The web should be a natural at this. But it's either centralized -> monetized -> corrupted, or decentr…

There is the Journal of Open Source Software perhaps:

https://joss.theoj.org/

Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time

#650

Post by imcritic »

noduerme wrote: post #648
scirob wrote: post #622

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has anyone tried building a modern Stack Overflow that's actually designed for AI-first developers? The core idea: question gets asked → immediately shows answers from 3 different AI models. Users get instant value. Then humans show up to verify, break it down, or add production context. But flip the reputation system: instead of reputation for answers, you get it for catching what's wrong or verifying what works. "T…

Oh, so it wasn't bad enough to spot bad human answers as an expert on Stack Overflow... now humans should spend their time spotting bad AI answers? How about a model where you ask a human and no AI input is allowed, to make sure that everyone has everyone else's full attention?

Why disallow AI input? Is it that poor? Surely it isn't.
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