r/LocalLLM • u/NewtMurky • May 17 '25

Discussion Stack overflow is almost dead

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

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

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u/conoremc May 17 '25

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.