Stack Overflow has seen a substantial decline in traffic over the last year that appears to be accelerating. https://observablehq.com/@ayhanfuat/the-fall-of-stack-overflow
I think this has as much to do with Google being shit at finding stuff lately as it does llms like chatGPT
You can even see the decline in posts and votes before GPT became mainstream. This definitely look more like search engine failing to get rid of those cheap copycats.
Wait, what? On Google??
On Google and on Duck Duck Go too. On DDG you can’t get rid of the over-optimized websites anymore even if you use -“website name”. Luckily -site:address still works.
That’s crazy. Google/DDG bloat from SEO websites had already driven me out a while ago, so I hadn’t noticed. I’ve been using Kagi for a few months now, and I find I can trust my search results again. Being able to permanently downgrade or even block a given website is an awesome feature, I would recommend it just for that.
Hmm, not really used to the idea of paying for search, but I understand.
Is it good at filtering AI generated sites and sites that are clearly copy pasted. Or do you kind of have to identify that yourself and manually block?
There’s no specific AI detection at the moment, as far as I can tell. But it has “listicle” detection. If you ask “best lawn mower”, all these “the 5 best lawn mowers of 2023” websites with affiliated Amazon links get pooled into a compact Listicle section, that you can just scroll past and ignore.
I think it’s worth testing it with the free 100 searches. All you need is an email address (no credit card unless you’re actually subscribing). I’ve only been using it a few days but I don’t think it filters out AI generated sites. But you can set a ranking by site (block, lower, normal, raise, pin) so you can make stack overflow be priorised and block quora.
They have a ranking board of top sites in each category so you can go through it and set the rank of a bunch of sites upfront.
Agreed. For me, making it so that the search engine ignores -string was one of the biggest set backs.
the search engine ignores -string
WHAT? Why would they do that? WTF no wonder…
Hyphen (-) means you don’t want to see this word, while words surrounded by quotes (") means you want these phrases exactly.
Most symbols are also ignored, which is great for an average user but terrible for programmers.
IDK what shitoverflow gets out of being so fucking toxic. I asked one dumb question and I’m basically banned from posting on the website.
It feels like they’re trying to be a sort of “wikipedia” of every programming problem and solution. The problem is that eventually everything will be posted, and everyone will be banned from the website.
You lack vision, but I see a place where people get blocked and their questions opened then immediately closed as duplicates. Opened and closed, opened and closed all day, all night. Soon, where the internet once stood will be a string of condescending experts, admonitions that “you shouldn’t do that, do Y instead”, pleas for information closed as off-topic. Passive aggression, spiteful ego contests and wonderful, wonderful karma meters reaching as far as the eye can see. My God, it’ll be beautiful.
“you shouldn’t do that, do Y instead”
That’s one of my favorites: ignore the problem, only pick on the scope we can’t change.
I asked for advice on how to express something in UML once:
“No one cares whether you follow the UML standard, just make something up”
“But my company uses waterfall and requires UML diagrams to move onto the next phase of development!”
“That’s an issue with your company then. Ask your boss how to do it. Question closed.”
It isnt even my problem and I still despair reading this.
The problem is that eventually everything will be posted, and everyone will be banned from the website.
I don’t think they see that as a problem, that’s the goal
It feels like they’re trying to be a sort of “wikipedia” of every programming problem and solution.
That is exactly what stackoverflow is supposed to be. It’s not there to answer your question about “why is my IF statement not working”, it’s there to be a resource for all developers. How is a question about your specific problem gonna helps anyone ? If you haven’t, take the time to read the “how to ask” section, it describes what kind of questions are acceptable and what kind are not.
There is, obviously, some proper questions that should not have been deleted, but most of them are not suited for the site, as they don’t bring anything to the rest of the community.
If SO supposed to be wiki, then why there no clear way to update the answer with new information? Why only the person that asked the question can mark answer as correct? Clearly some person with more expirience should have possibility to mark answer as correct.
“You should be making a wiki page instead of a forum.”
- SO user on SO business model, thread closed Aug 2008
This doesn’t tell us much without also including the quality of the posts. Are we sure this isn’t just idiots who ask stupid question that can be found on Google over and over not doing that now that they have chatgpt
Well, for starters, the fall started six months before ChatGPT launched. And there was a brief uptick in traffic after ChatGPT’s launch.
For me the real problem with Stack Overflow, as someone who was one of the earliest users of the service, is when you ask a question now you don’t actually get a good answer anymore. Often your question just gets deleted by moderators. And even when I’ve answered someone’s perfectly good question, the question (and my answer) have been deleted by mods.
All I can say is thank god ChatGPT came when it did, because we needed something to replace Stack Overflow.
Do we have a community on lemmy to ask questions like stackoverflow?
It wouldn’t be very good.
Most people want answers, not questions, and with Stack Overflow the answers are usually already there and easy to find. Plus they are maintained and kept up to date, so if something was correct six years ago but isn’t anymore, that will usually be obvious before you try the solution.
Some kind of federated stack overflow alternative could be awesome, but Lemmy is not it and never will be.
Is there a fediverse alternative yet?
Also, if you are a technical person I urge you to start a blog where you document problems you solve. It’s a great ressource for others and a resumé for you.
Most of the comments here seem to be arguing whether it’s better to get help now from SO or ChatGPT, but this is a pretty short-sighted mindset.
What happens when the next new standard comes out that ChatGPT hasn’t been trained on? If SO tanks and dies, where will you go?
I’m not saying use a lesser resource, I’m saying this is kinda tragic and I hope they can sustain themselves; AI is propped up by human input and can’t train itself.
Does it really though? It seems to me that once you nail the general intelligence, you’ll just need to provide the supplemental information (e.g. new documentations) for it to give an accurate response.
Bing already somewhat does this by connecting their bot to internet searches
deleted by creator
We will go to the documentation.
Hey, if people are going to go back to reading manuals like we’re in the 1980’s again is it such a bad thing? /s
It’s insane how a single tool managed to completely destroy the value collectively created by people in over a decade.
That single tool is still propped up by that collective decade of knowledge. ChatGPT would be nothing without sites like stackoverflow
Yeah but will people still care about contributing that information if they’re not going to be compensated for it in any way? Like people get something out of contributing to stack overflow, even if it’s just recognition. This is gone with ChatGPT.
Isn’t that the FOSS model since ever?
Is this due to the chatgpt?
Its so exhausting having to train chat gpt to be condescending and to close all my threads as duplicates though
ChatGPT went public at the start of the last kink downward. It can not be the reason for the big drop untill 2023.
I really like using code.whatever.social as an alternative frontend to Stack Overflow. It has way less distractions and allows me to only look at the question and the answers and nothing else.
I really like this, never saw it before. Thanks!
No problem. You can use extensions like LibRedirect in order to make it automatically change SO to this one.
I bet this is directly related to ChatGPT
ChatGPT isn’t that good at code generation lol.
Doesn’t need to be good. Just good enough that people need SO less often. If GitHub Copilot gives a code suggestion, I don’t need to look up some syntax or some method I forgot. I’m reminded, and can see that it’s correct. No searching online required.
is that what people used stackoverflow for? I google cheatsheets for simple syntax reminders.
What I found stack overflow useful for was ‘I have this random bug in this random browser / os combo - here’s what hasn’t worked, has anyone dealt with it?’ - and then hopefully we can all share the misery of this bug until someone figures out the source.
Not sure where to go for that type of thing anymore.
Not exactly why people seek out SO, but it shows up in Google searches and people click. Now there are fewer google searches for that sort of thing.
People prefer having something generating shitty code and not checking it, instead of asking or searching on internet for a substantially better solution
Because forum posts are always full of accurate and helpful information?
In my experience it still makes good suggestions for most things, and is better than trying to phrase things in a way that Google likes, then trawling through irrelevant forum posts.
It’s only there to make suggestions, so if someone is taking its output without understanding and treating it like gospel then they’re an idiot who’s inevitably going to end up in a world of trouble.
If you take the suggestion, verify it with documentation, then make sure you actually understand it, chatGPT is a great tool.
If I’m honest, stackoverflow was always a shortcut for searching documentation to me.
Simple stuff like how do I turn an InputStream to a String again? I can’t remember it, but I know exactly what to look for, I’m just to lazy.
For that kind of stuff ChatGPT is almost perfect.
Because forum posts are always full of accurate and helpful information?
Not necessarily, but at least there’s much more opportunity for other people to jump in and correct false info or expand upon something. It’s by no means a flawless system, but it’s better than only have one source of information
At least ChatGPT will not flag the question as duplicate.
“I’m sorry, as an AI language model this question has been asked too many times and there is insufficient computer resources to handle your request. You’ve been temporarily silenced for 15 minutes.”
Chatgpt is still a tool and it’s up to the user how to use it. If you google “bolognese recipe” you get one result; if you Google “traditional ragu from Bologna” you get another. Same for ChatGPT.
You are delusional and will be left behind if that is your view point. The code is usually largely accurate only needing a few tweaks. Easily one of the most powerful scaffolding and learning tool I’ve used in 25 years. Our developers embracing it are more efficient then ever and passing static analysis, owasp scans, coding standards just fine if not better than cranky old devs who think they couldn’t possibly be helped by a dumb machine.
I prefer being delusional and a cranky old dev, rather than trusting AI by giving all of my workplace code and logic. Powerful? Maybe. Helping you ship products faster? I don’t know ; no metrics have been published about that in controlled settings, and I still think people will get lazy and after some time even the ones that tweaked the code and analyzed it thoroughly will just stop caring.
Go ahead, jump in that bandwagon, and prove me wrong in 5 years. All I want is proof.
Also, I didn’t know one could be a cranky old dev after a few years of experience only
SO is a shithole, just like Reddit. All the work is done by volunteers. When it was time to cash out with the platform, they also did several things to fuck with their community. I’ve contributed quite a bit to the trilogy sites, and served as a moderator. I regret every second of it. But at least a few people got rich in the process.
I don’t get why programmers, especially ones actually working on open source projects, insist on using proprietary services. Stack Overflow is one, also GitHub.
Because it’s free and reliable
It’s unfortunate, but the reality is that many of the proprietary services are… free, convenient, and where the people are.
Most projects do not have a lot of funding, so it makes sense to use low cost platforms with the least amount of friction. I think most developers are aware of the risks and trade-offs, but make a pragmatic decision to use these proprietary services b/c the benefits for them outweigh the costs.
Because there are no free and quality alternatives.
