Ask HN: Is Stack Overflow Dead?

With the explosion of AI tools in our workflows this year, I stopped using Stack Overflow and copilot.

Previously, SO was an unavoidable step of my programming effort for navigating or learning new frameworks, for exploring solutions, for debugging strange cases.... But now , it has been a long while since I visited the site.

Are you still using SO, reading, searching, contributing?

It's a tragedy but I think it's true that SO has lost a significant amount of value given AI's new presence. Having said that, it's not like it's dead - it's a community of real people rather than an amalgamation of knowledge in a single tool. What sets SO apart and will always set it apart is that human aspect. For future problems that AI has no knowledge of, there will always be a group of people better equipped to answer questions through real life experience and deductions that AI simply cannot apply. I suspect in the next few years, SO will evolve into a platform that focuses on that human aspect because ultimately that's the only avenue I can see that would work. It's unlikely SO will die any time soon, it's more likely that the platform will find ways of pivoting to keep business flowing. It's not like SO is struggling for questions right now anyway, it continues to be a massively popular platform. Predicting the future is somewhat of a pointless task but I think it's safe to say, for now, that SO is still alive, and will be that way for a while at least.

If SO comes up in search results, I visit it. But I should also add that I usually skip reading "AI" results or summaries. There's usually nuance in SO questions and answers that "AI" leaves out.

If not, I bet everyone is waiting for it to die, and take hn with it.

I’ve had many situations where a sourced AI summary has references that don’t show up in the top search results. Clicking through to the source gives me the nuance and context of the full post that I wouldn’t have found without the AI summary. Even if you don’t trust the summary, rightfully so, it can still be good at surfacing good results.

(My experience here was with Kagi, I’m not sure how Google and others are with this)