this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2026
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Programming

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[–] BradleyUffner@lemmy.world 14 points 1 day ago

That's what happens when mods auto close everything as a duplicate without taking a moment to really understand the question.

Also when you ruin your site with AI garbage.

[–] Marija_@programming.dev 1 points 21 hours ago

So AI answers replaced questions. Growthfroth

[–] whereitsat@lemmy.zip 11 points 1 day ago

how are humans going to progress if you eliminate all the resources for humans to share experience?

imagine 20 years in the future where you no longer have a resource like stack overflow to troubleshoot the latest technology.

where is AI going to steal its answers from?

this seems like a dumbfuck gambit based on hopes and dreams. even if an AI can achieve what they're hoping, it won't know everything. they're banking on AI having the experience and intelligence of billions of humans.

we're fucked.

[–] Kissaki@programming.dev 24 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

That's it, all possible questions have been asked! /s

99% is a crazy number for a drop. I guess if you're big enough can can still survive and 1% is still significant. The trajectory is pretty clear and worrying [for them], though.

/edit:

Stack Overflow recorded 1,442 new questions in July 2026

That's… very few. 50 a day. Two per hour. For a platform [that was] as big as Stack Overflow.

[–] Million@lemmy.zip 21 points 2 days ago

Asked and answered, closing this.

[–] callous_trog@lemmy.zip 10 points 1 day ago

First AI came for those who answer questions, next it'll come for those who ask questions! Crazy how quickly the whole process is being automated away.

[–] anon_8675309@lemmy.world 47 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Always hated SO. They acted like they fostered the developer culture of sharing that had happened for decades. But instead they helped bring in the bro culture that ruined development. Now we have interviews that are hazing sessions. Code reviews that turn into fights. It goes on. And SO culture was part of that.

Fuck them.

[–] hirihit640@sh.itjust.works 11 points 2 days ago

Can you elaborate on "bro culture"? I never felt like my interviews or code reviews were very fratty

[–] a1studmuffin@aussie.zone 50 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Stack Overflow: You're absolutely wrong
ChatGPT: You're absolutely right

[–] anton@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 15 hours ago

If i was right, I wouldn't be having the conversation. Therefore SO is closer to the truth.

[–] joelthelion@lemmy.world 152 points 2 days ago (21 children)

Why would you ask a question to see it closed immediately and be insulted on top of it? No thanks

[–] SpikesOtherDog@ani.social 121 points 2 days ago (1 children)

This was already answered in a reddit thread from 2019. This comment is redundant and should be removed.

[–] SeductiveTortoise@piefed.social 35 points 2 days ago (1 children)

On top of it, op lacks basic thinking skills and stinks of mackerel.

[–] natecox@programming.dev 13 points 2 days ago (1 children)

They need to go, before we taunt them a second time.

Are you one of the knights who say "Ni!" or a mod on stack overflow? Or ... FRENCH?

[–] Sibbo@sopuli.xyz 17 points 2 days ago

Exactly my experience.

Asking a question was agreeing to be abused. You have to followed the rules exactly to maybe get a useful answer.

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[–] ZoteTheMighty@lemmy.zip 16 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Imagine being such a bad website, you're basically the only thing AI actually took down.

[–] apotheotic@beehaw.org 11 points 1 day ago

AI took down a fuck load of independent/small websites by bombarding them with millions of connections for scraping and by circumventing user traffic to them

[–] calcopiritus@lemmy.world 18 points 2 days ago (1 children)

SO was in decline before AI. AI just accelerated the process. The shit moderation is what took it down.

[–] Reginald_T_Biter@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I only became a dev 5 years ago its incredibly restrictive. They dug their own grave with their moderation.

[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Absolutely

I've used it many times as a lurker, and I would have loved to add answers buy it was just not usable for that

[–] Reginald_T_Biter@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Seems like unless you can come up with a novel question, you basically cant vote or comment. So I guess... just not interact?

[–] NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 day ago

AI didn't take it down. Stack overflow was on the way out way before.

[–] deegeese@sopuli.xyz 73 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Stack Overflow’s moderation was cooked long before LLMs came to harvest the corpse.

[–] Buckshot@programming.dev 21 points 2 days ago

I've been on the site since 2008 i think. Used to use it loads. Posted questions and answers. The question i actually got an answer to was 2018. Since then it would just get nothing. Sometimes a mod might tweak it a bit in a pointless way but just no answers. Gave up in the end.

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[–] SammyJK@programming.dev 48 points 2 days ago (8 children)

Not surprising. Not only is it easier to ask stuff from AI chat bots, the responses on SO can often be so condescending and outright mean that it further drives people to ask questions from the yesmanning LLMs.

[–] hirihit640@sh.itjust.works 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

LLMs are trained to be sycophants, quick to praise and agree, in order to keep the user satisfied. This allows poor practices and behaviors to persist, at least until the user joins a team and becomes aware of their issues. Stackoverflow actually calls people out and teaches how to do research, and write informed questions. I got called out for some of my first few questions, and almost never after that, because I learned to do proper research and write proper questions.

[–] SammyJK@programming.dev 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Oh absolutely, I'm not denying any of that. But Stack Overflow is also filled with incredibly snarky people, whose feedback is less than productive. That's why I understand many beginners preferring LLMs over SO. Calling out bad practices is a good thing, but it doesn't mean people should be straight up rude.

[–] hirihit640@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 day ago

Fair point, I've seen the rudeness myself. There's way to be constructive in criticism, and that should be taught as well

[–] thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 15 points 2 days ago

The difference of a private chat with an Ai to a public question on Stack Overflow (or any forum for that matter) is, that on Stack Overflow multiple persons can read and comment. Answers often iterate and fact check if someone hallucinates, because so many eyes sees it. If the answers are helpful is something everyone has to decide themselves, but the principle of an open platform being very useful is undeniable.

Compare this to your private Ai chatbot. Only one person sees the answer and if something hallucinated is in there or the quality of the answer is not good, then you might not know. And those Ai bots are controlled by the few big corporations, maybe a little less if you use a custom offline bot, but they are probably not as good as the big models. That's why this is a bad trend. I think the open and user controlled Stack Overflow was a better approach, by principle.

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[–] Gsus4@mander.xyz 16 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

I would ask a question, but last time they even said it sounded like homework. Fuck'em. But I still like it as a knowledge base.

[–] thain@piefed.world 4 points 2 days ago

Yea, it's better than some of the other "knowledge base" platforms on the internet (discord)

[–] FizzyOrange@programming.dev 12 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Yeah... I have 100k rep (almost exactly!) and I don't use it any more. It doesn't have the network effects, so even if there is a question that AI can't answer (which does still happen despite what some people seem to think), I don't go to Stackoverflow, I go somewhere else. A forum, GitHub repo discussions, even IRC once (OpenOCD still uses that for some weird reason - they were extremely helpful though).

It had a good run. RIP.

[–] sanitation@lemmy.today 10 points 2 days ago

Those guys sold SO just in the right time in 2021.

[–] Kissaki@programming.dev 3 points 2 days ago

I wanted to check my rep, but the website login is down, while the status page shows all operational. lol

This site is currently in read-only mode. We’ll return with full functionality soon. Visit our status page or search our recent meta posts on the topic for more info.

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