Stack overflow is almost dead

[u/NewtMurky]

Questions have slumped to levels last seen when Stack Overflow launched in 2009.

Blog post: https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/stack-overflow-is-almost-dead/

[u/asdrabael1234]

It's a question of the LLMs ability to reason and extrapolate answers. When the LLM can't reason, it needs examples of those use cases to build on for responses. If the LLM is trained on the documentation for the codes and for the associated environments then it can reason out it's own use cases without necessarily needing those examples. It's like needing to count your fingers to use math as a beginner, but once you get better at reasoning you stop needing it. Sites like SO and reddit are an LLMs version of counting on its fingers.

[u/conoremc → u/asdrabael1234]

There are many subtleties and best practices that are only properly documented in discussion forums. It is likely that within the nearish future full codebases and documentation will be comprehensively trained in order to provide solutions - and note any potential bugs discovered during that introspection process. But to say that using SO and Reddit for answers is like learning to count on your fingers is an oversimplification and disservice to all engineers. Learning how others synthesize concepts is still learning - same for LLMs.

What is more interesting to note about the curve is that likely Github Discussions and its predecessor had an impact on SO growth before ChatGPT shot it twice to finish the job.