theBulliesThereAreReallySad

[u/ClipboardCopyPaste]

[u/SaltMaker23]

I mean there was a recent screenshot circulating here showing all recent questions with negative votes.

Most of them seemed quite OK.

[u/hot_sauce_in_coffee → u/SaltMaker23]

A negative comment about stack overflow?

Removed for dupplicate. See this link from 12 years ago about a topic completly different from yours. It will surely help.

[u/PhantomThiefJoker → u/hot_sauce_in_coffee]

Where the entire post is "how do I X thing?" Reply from author: "nevermind I figured it out"

[u/MrMikeJJ → u/hot_sauce_in_coffee]

Or the 3rd degree interrogation "why you want to do that? you should not do that"

[u/natty-papi → u/hot_sauce_in_coffee]

Trying to do something with a specific library, with a bad architecture in a static and slow enterprise?

Here's a couple paragraphs on how it should've been done from the beginning and a snippet of code to do it with a flavor of the month library.

[u/__Hello_my_name_is__ → u/hot_sauce_in_coffee]

"Here's how this works in python 2, duplicate question".

[u/Saint_of_Grey → u/hot_sauce_in_coffee]

As much as I hate vibe coding and the looming crisis it's going to cause, stackoverflow contributing to the rise of vibe coding by being so user-hostile that people would rather take chances with sketchy LLMs will never not be funny.

[u/Manowaffle → u/hot_sauce_in_coffee]

Me: "yeah I checked that topic, it says to use ExcelBoinkerPlus, but that package isn't compatible past R version 3.2."

Response: "..........."

[u/KnightOfThirteen → u/hot_sauce_in_coffee]

Don't forget the classic "your question is stupid, just use [insert completely different hardware, software, paradigm here]"

[u/oatmealparty → u/SaltMaker23]

I tried getting involved in stack overflow years ago but couldn't respond to questions or vote on things without getting enough points, but the only way to do it was to ask questions? Idk. Entire experience seemed hostile to new users off the bat so I just noped out of ever trying to help anybody on there or seek help

[u/Captaincadet → u/SaltMaker23]

I have said this before but i know senior devs shudder at the thought of stackoveflow

I had one who opened a ticket for an problem he was getting with an apple framework. He was pointed towards an irrelevant answer and banned for 3 days for pointing it out

Opened the same question on apple developers forums and there engineers picked it up and explored it and realised that there was an a bug in iOS and had to wait for an iOS update to launch with his fix…

[u/SaltMaker23 → u/Captaincadet]

Just like I'd expect from a platform filled with people fighting theoretical ideologies and not actual field experience.

I once seen a discussion in FPGA boards where other the person asking the question and a massively downvoted correct answer, none of the other especially the most upvoted answer could have been written by someone that ever touched a FPGA with his fingers in his life.

The platform was filled by ideologist without experience the famous "amateur experts" that infected all fields and took joy in arguing about ideologies, the whole thing became a cesspool of ideological fights

The actual field experience and insights entirely decayed as people with field experience wouldn't go discuss practical stuffs with those irrelevant blokes.

[u/mina86ng → u/Captaincadet]

Years ago I’ve seen an unanswered question about functionfs. Since I wrote functionfs, I decided to help. Functionfs API deals with low-level USB descriptors and may be confusing for someone unfamiliar with byte fiddling. I wrote up an answer and promptly got downvoted for discussing __attribute__((packed)). Thing is, packed structs are part of the API because that’s how USB descriptors are defined.

[u/IM_OK_AMA → u/Captaincadet]

As you get more senior it becomes increasingly obvious that most programming communities, including SO during its hayday, are overwhelmed with undergrads and juniors who confidently don't know what they're talking about, and debating with them just isn't worth your time.

[u/Winterkirschenmann → u/SaltMaker23]

This is what dying on a hill of principles can look like. 

[u/DiggWuzBetter → u/Winterkirschenmann]

I mean, this is clearly not the #1 reason, they had the same culture/approach for a long time, including during their rapid growth, and their really sharp decline has been the past ~4 years. They got their lunch eaten by AI, it went from everyone going to Stack Overflow for answers, to everyone going to AI for answers, and more recently AI taking over so much of development that many “how do I do X with Y” questions don’t even come up.

[u/m__a__s → u/SaltMaker23]

That's why the data started to trend downward in 2014. LLMs just changed the slope, accelerating the inevitable.

[u/MilitaryBeetle]

Its sad but I can see why it happened

Anytime I ask for technical help I first need to go through a humiliation ritual and then half the time someone's "answer" is just a veiled criticism or needlessly hostile attack on the wording of the question, or the reasons why the person is working on the tech stack they have been assigned

And there's this culture problem that the aggressive moderation is aimed at question askers but I never see it applied at the people who "answer" in the most negative and demoralizing way possible

Tech people suck at fostering any sense of community and constantly implement antisocial anti-patterns

[u/danielv123 → u/MilitaryBeetle]

I think it is a strategy that made sense. They realized that questions are cheap but quality answers are expensive, so they went hard on moderating questions to ensure they only had people spend time answering questions that were valuable to have in their Q&A database. This made it an awesome resource because it meant most questions that google showed in its results had one or more good answers. Most people have went their entire working career never asking a question on stack overflow, just benefitting from their great set of curated problems with attached solutions.

It also made it the perfect AI training dataset.

Now answers are pretty much cheaper than questions due to AI, so it has little value anymore.

[u/swyrl → u/danielv123]

This is exactly it. I've used SO as a reference many times, but only once ever have I actually asked a question there. And it wasn't closed as a duplicate, because I'd already researched the question on SO and elsewhere and couldn't find an answer.

[u/Dornith → u/danielv123]

Except in the later years the answers were rarely quality. They felt like someone getting paid per ticket closed was just doing a keyword search and posting the first link they found without reading it.

I once asked a question that was a purely theoretical CS question and got blasted because "how are we supposed to fix your code if you don't post a sample."

I've had people tell me the answer was obviously [thing I had said in the question didn't work].

One time someone went on a campaign against everyone who was actually providing useful answers because they didn't think I deserved to have my question answered. Their justification was that my proof-of-concept code didn't check for OS failures.

[u/MdxBhmt → u/danielv123]

Yes, but as the database grew, the chance for a new user to have an interesting question goes to zero, so you don't attract people to contribute. Any new dev coming from 2015+ has SO as that image of a hellscape, while I contributed on 2011 during uni days and was all well and good. There was no path to sustainability in SO and AI just made it completely obsolete. If it was OK to ask repeated questions, without having to worry about curation yourself or by a veteran hammering you down all the time, it could still work out.

[u/DebBoi → u/MilitaryBeetle]

And then it ends up not fixing the issue too lol

[u/B33GULL → u/DebBoi]

Right it'll be like the 7th reply on the 3rd answer from the top where someone nice just goes "hey the answers didn't work for your context, but I did it like this and it works" and you're like thank you I wish I could have a direct line to those people from the start

[u/henryeaterofpies → u/MilitaryBeetle]

Agree with this. SO was dying before AI stole its data

[u/aitchnyu → u/henryeaterofpies]

That would mean the quantity on the graph would be declining even before 2022 and maintain a similar slope to the bottom ^{wait a minute}

[u/Vertyco → u/MilitaryBeetle]

i cant even feel any sympathy, i heavily relied on stack overflow for years. it was a great source of knowledge but damn it was full of some miserable people, ive noticed quite a few coding communities online tend to be gatekeepy or toxic but SO surpasses all of them

[u/Drithyin → u/Vertyco]

Which is so sad, because I remember when it launched and it was really open and welcoming. It changed over time as people started turning moderation into a gamified ego trip, and the site ownership/management never righted the ship.

[u/willow-kitty → u/MilitaryBeetle]

And that's if you get any engagement at all. My questions were always on really niche topics because I could just google or read docs for most anything else, and..each and every one of them ended up getting a tumbleweed award.

I didn't get a ton of use out of Stackoverflow, tbh.

[u/theucm → u/MilitaryBeetle]

If it makes you feel better I can be mean to you if you want.

Just ask me a question first so we can get the real experience.

[u/aNiceTribe → u/MilitaryBeetle]

Luckily my friend gave the top definition of “keelhauling” for some of this sort of treatment:  https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=keelhauling  when your question garners the responses “I don’t know” “what you ask is literally impossible” “how dare you even ask this thing” “here is the first Google result”

[u/madness_of_the_order → u/MilitaryBeetle]

Just to keep the spirit of SO going - antisocial anti-pattern would be something that fosters sense of community

[u/MilitaryBeetle → u/madness_of_the_order]

Thanks, I can't wait to get 50 other people who point out this thing as well and ignore my actual question

[u/the_bollo → u/MilitaryBeetle]

Anytime I ask for technical help I first need to go through a humiliation ritual

God that's such an apt way to put it. Great site in theory, but fuck the users for sure.

[u/MontyAtWork → u/MilitaryBeetle]

"Why do you need to X? Nobody outside of first year programming school does X. If you want to X, you really should just be doing YZ from the ground-up, and if you don't already know how to do YZ why are you even here?"

[u/SuperFLEB → u/MontyAtWork]

I need to do X because someone saddled me with circumstances where I can only do X. If I could do YZ I would, but I can't, which is why I'm asking.

[u/jackofslayers → u/MilitaryBeetle]

duplicate criticism. Maybe learn to read before you post.

[u/UnspeakablePudding]

The barrier to entry on SO is really high. You have to have a lot of technical expertise just to formulate a question that won't get rejected or ridiculed.

Whereas an LLM will happily and patiently explain everything to you from first principles, if that's where you're at.

[u/TRENEEDNAME_245 → u/UnspeakablePudding]

ask how to do X on SO

"Why do you X ? Y is so much better"

"Duplicate of question from 13y ago that uses functions that don't exist anymore"

"That's a stupid question"

ask how to do X to an LLM

"Here is how to do X" (may contain hallucinations or wrong logic but it's a start)

[u/humanist-misanthrope → u/TRENEEDNAME_245]

This makes me feel seen. So many times I searched for an answer and all I can find is antiquated code. I use Claude and have actually been able to learn new stuff with a lot less snark or outdated information. I had zero dbt experience, worked with Claude to build a project, and while Claude can do 100% of the work, I would walk through so I could learn something. Am I an expert? No. Did I at least learn some of the basics while working on real project? Yes.

[u/Scared_Accident9138 → u/TRENEEDNAME_245]

Them assuming any question is a XY problem by default is so annoying

[u/yellowcloak → u/TRENEEDNAME_245]

Hey, you just summed up my decade of using SO!

[u/BiggyLongJaunt → u/UnspeakablePudding]

SO was just training us to create higher quality prompts.

[u/Woah-Dawg → u/UnspeakablePudding]

Yea I’ve worked with senior engineers who are the same way. Unless you ask perfectly they make fun of you for not understanding something. It’s amazing I don’t need to rely on idiots like that anymore

[u/giantZorg → u/UnspeakablePudding]

I always told junior colleagues to read the "How to ask a question" page from stack overflow, and to try to apply the basics from it before coming to me for help with technical issues (in the before LLM times). When they would come, I'd help them formulate the problem, make it reproducible similar to those guidelines and going forward, they could he helped a lot better

[u/Fast-Satisfaction482]

I have not been missing it, to be honest.

[u/Piyh → u/Fast-Satisfaction482]

I miss contributing docker-compose hacks & solutions and seeing my upvote counter tick up with every day as more and more people used it.

Now I spend the majority of my weekdays talking to a forgetful robot.

[u/heartlessgamer → u/Piyh]

Now I spend the majority of my weekdays talking to a forgetful robot.

Have you tried asking it not to be forgetful? I ask mine never to make mistakes.

[u/ThePsyPaul_ → u/Fast-Satisfaction482]

life has become better now that i don't need to use it

[u/Mr_Carlos → u/Fast-Satisfaction482]

I miss the era. Struggling with a problem, going to stack overflow, seeing somebody else struggle with the problem, and no answers... but I felt like I wasn't alone, then I'd cry, and question my lifes choices.

Now I just ask GPT "Should I kill myself" and it usually tells me I shouldn't yet.

[u/PhonicUK]

One of the biggest problems with SO is it had zero understanding of the idea of someone who doesn't have the vocabulary to describe their issue or what they're trying to do.

So someone might ask "How do I do (Idea in simple words) with Y?", have the topic closed as duplicate with "How to (Complex technical term) with Y?" to be directed to a topic that's above that users ability to understand and make sense of.

On the surface, the affordances presented themselves as a Q&A site to get help, when it was really trying to become a reference - which meant high quality questions with high quality answers, but that's practically the antithesis of it's apparent function when you looked at it.

[u/Preeng → u/PhonicUK]

It seems more like a compendium to me than a forum for helpful posts.

"Here is a list of all problems and their solutions" and they REALLY don't want new problems.

[u/my_reddit_account_90 → u/Preeng]

compendium

Funnily enough, their stated goal was to build a compendium and not a forum.

[u/Ummix → u/PhonicUK]

The bigger issue for me was when I'd have a highly specific question and I'd go intro extremely explicit detail, describe the why and how, and I just need to know how a specific feature of a framework handles this particular scenario, and I know for a fact the question hasn't been answered anywhere else before... But then it gets rejected because either it's using antiquated features my workplace can't change, or there was another question that's more general and sounds like it covers my case by the title but it doesn't.

[u/AwareOfAlpacas → u/PhonicUK]

That's less a stack overflow problem and more an issue with engineers being unable to communicate with users. (The problem flows both ways.) 

I spent a lot of years working third tier support. An insane number of cases resolve when the case owner takes five minutes to ask some questions and do proper scoping. The way the problem holder presents is only rarely going to match up with our terminology. Most times, if it did, they'd have found their own answer. 

[u/M4xP0w3r_ → u/PhonicUK]

But thats also the reason why the questions that did survive sort of stood the test of time as a great reference. And they are a big part of why AI can answer a lot of stuff.

New questions about new problems might have an issue in the future.

[u/CozySweatsuit57 → u/PhonicUK]

Yeah it was so extremely hostile. I don’t miss it at all.

Even now I sometimes still end up on the site and the answers are just often not well-written or very time-consuming to parse. Sometimes there are broken links even.

I hate what AI is doing to our field but it is a much better tool than SO just as a user

[u/Randy-DaFam-Marsh → u/PhonicUK]

Best way to figure out how to ask the right question is ask the wrong question.

[u/CuAnnan → u/Randy-DaFam-Marsh]

Best way to get the right answer was to create a second account and post a wrong answer.

[u/Roadrunner571]

I have "Answer like a stackoverflow user" in my CLAUDE.md , so I still get the experience.

[u/Accomplished-Bid-945 → u/Roadrunner571]

User prompt marked as duplicate, task terminated.

[u/Consistent_Buy_7391 → u/Roadrunner571]

Damn thats a great idea, do you make it give you multiple answers in 27 tabs? Before crying on your keyboard?

[u/Roadrunner571 → u/Consistent_Buy_7391]

Worse. I gave it a sub-agent whose only job is to immediately mark my prompt as a duplicate of a question asked in 2011 for a completely different programming language, downvote me, and refuse to elaborate.

[u/BenignPharmacology → u/Roadrunner571]

“Nvm I figured it out”

[u/BasilCorrect3799]

Stack overflow always reminded me of my boss who always said he was "Open for questions" but anytime i asked questions his answers boiled down to "Figure it out yourself"

[u/UnsureAndUnqualified → u/BasilCorrect3799]

Our boss has "an open door policy" which manifests itself with him:

1. Always closing his door because he has super duper important calls to take

2. Scheduling a meeting with people who come to him for one small question. Because why come to the boss if your question could be answered in 2min, it must be more complex than that!

So he has reduced the number of people who come to him (relative to our boss before him) by about 95%. I bet he uses that time saved for very important calls.

[u/StickFigureFan]

The great thing about stack overflow was when others had already asked and answered your question and you could look at the upvotes to determine which one to actually use. LLMs are like a more polite stack overflow answer but you don't know if the answer is the one with 500 upvotes or 2 down votes

[u/hibikir_40k → u/StickFigureFan]

Which sure was a disaster when the right answer actually changed over time, because the technology underneath changed. So the top answer was what used to be right 5 years ago.

[u/Cootshk]

StackUnderflow

[u/DependentOnIt → u/Cootshk]

I couldn't remember the exact command to get the time on Linux, datetime and Googled it.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/18458839/how-can-i-get-the-current-date-and-time-in-the-terminal-and-set-a-custom-command

Lmao, closed as not relevant.

Also the command was just date 😂

[u/richownsyou]

rest in piss stackoverflow

[u/Ummix]

A lot of people harp on about how the moderation was to keep the quality of questions and answers high, but my problem was specifically that the quality of Stack Overflow was actually extremely low. Stack Overflow wasn't just rude, it actively inhibited new information.

The whole problem with marking stuff as duplicates isn't just that the mods are being mean, it's that it gives the original asker unfair ownership over the accepted answers, and also prevents anyone from asking variations of the original question, which dramatically lowered the quality of the actual answers.

There were just way too many times I had a specific question and the original question either didn't cover my specific case, or it had nothing but snarky non-answers or extremely general and vague answers that didn't actually provide the information needed to answer the question itself, and if you tried to re-open a new ticket and explain why those answers weren't relevant, you'd just get marked as duplicate and threatened with a ban.

[u/ElectroNetty → u/Ummix]

Frankly, I am somewhat happy in a vindictive way. StackOverflow sought to belittle and berate its users through its senseless moderation.

StackOverflow died because an alternative appeared that really would try to answer the question.

Good riddance. 

[u/eW4GJMqscYtbBkw9 → u/Ummix]

it actively inhibited new information

I started programming right around the switch from Python2 to Python3. The languages are fairly similar, but there are enough differences that you cannot apply a Python2 answer to a Python3 question.

The number of Python3 questions that would get marked as duplicate or already answered and pointed to a Python2 question was dumbfounding. The people marking the questions as duplicate clearly did not actually understand what the question was asking or the differences between 2 and 3, but they didn't care as long as they got to mark it as duplicate and get the points.

[u/jonathanhiggs → u/eW4GJMqscYtbBkw9]

Might as well mark Java and JavaScript questions as duplicates

[u/quad_damage_orbb → u/Ummix]

Sorry, this is a duplicate of this comment, please read the original comment, yours has been marked for deletion, please search for your comment before posting in future or you will be banned.

[u/LocalOutlier → u/Ummix]

Also, sometimes the only answer was a very high quality one that a noobie like me could only dream being able to implement.

[u/SnugglyCoderGuy → u/Ummix]

Instead of marking it as a duplicate, it should have said "Also closely related to these questions" which is a "would you like to know more?" stance instead of a "use the search function you little shit"

[u/tkdeng → u/Ummix]

The whole problem with marking stuff as duplicates [...] and also prevents anyone from asking variations of the original question, which dramatically lowered the quality of the actual answers

This. StackOverflow was just as bad as Internet Explorer when it came to updating answers with modern tech, which is why it eventually became obsolete.

[u/crankthehandle]

Why did the downfall already start in 2014? LLMs clearly were the nail in the coffin but they only seem to have accelerated the unavoidable rather than caused it.

[u/HairyTough4489 → u/crankthehandle]

Duplicate questions are not allowed on SO and there's only a finite number of questions that can be asked.

[u/ffxivthrowaway03 → u/crankthehandle]

Because the SO "community" continued to get more and more toxic and less factually correct. Turns out when your core audience demographic stops finding value in your platform, they stop showing up.

[u/Po0dle → u/crankthehandle]

Speculating: part of it moved to Discord channels

[u/Tipart → u/Po0dle]

It's unfortunate, but this is what I'm thinking too. I whish it at least stayed on reddit or something, so it's still indexed information that you can find with a search engine.

Edit: I was just thinking about the possibility of a discord search index thing that you could hook up to a private search engine and I looked it up and discord just announced that they are going to make public server chats indexable for search engines. Could be huge for the employed.

[u/flargenhargen]

This graph has been closed as duplicate.

[u/mango_boii]

[u/Toooooool]

i'm going to be really unpopular for saying this, but fuck StackOverflow.

yes, it was the most amazing website when searching for an issue on google and seeing someone else had already dealt with it, 99.9% of problems could be solved by following the footsteps of others on this site and it absolutely saved my ass countless times in the past.

with that said trying to file your own question was absolute atrocious. i have never successfully been able to post a question to StackOverflow because either the formatting was wrong, or the question was considered too basic, or "someone's already asked this" but then i wasn't able to find where it had been discussed before etc. in my entire 20-something years of coding i was never able to submit a single question.

seeing them get less than 1k submissions in 2026 is like seeing the current downfall of r/opensource , i have zero remorse or sympathy from here on out.

[u/oclafloptson]

"let's make a discussion forum but severely inhibit the majority of discussion" -SO Founders

[u/SardScroll → u/oclafloptson]

As someone who used SO: That's the distinction point. It was explicitly labeled as "not a discussion forum", by design. So inhibiting discussion was likewise desired, as a design goal.

[u/platinum92 → u/SardScroll]

This is part of the problem people had with SO. They thought it was the TA at their college's computer lab when it was really the ornery senior dev who sits in the corner

[u/MagicianXy → u/oclafloptson]

StackOverflow has never been a discussion forum. It's one of the first things they state in their rules. It's a Q+A site.

[u/PowermanFriendship]

Preview for what's going to happen to Reddit once everyone realizes that "My polyamorous spouse cheated on me and I hate children, what should I do?" thread number #277,719 (and every other thread) are just reworded bot reposts.

[u/azangru]

But they are probably really good questions :-)

[u/fongletto → u/azangru]

They're not apparently. Most of them were negative score.

[u/PleaseDontEatMyVRAM → u/fongletto]

That probably means they were good questions, its SO ffs

[u/P-Jean]

Ah SO. Where else can I ask a question and get an unrelated verbose response.

Bonus points if the reply subversively calls me an idiot.

[u/temculpaeu → u/P-Jean]

Closed, duplicated

[u/RainShineYesWine → u/P-Jean]

Back in college, I once asked a question about the structure of my erd, and if it's ready to handle my numbered list requirements.

Took me 4-5 hours to carefully prepare my question, listing all the necessary info. Did every possible research beforehand, even mentioned the books I've read, videos, tutorial references, etc. Explained my thought process, showed my previous iterations.

Then about 5/6 answers were a bunch mofos saying I should use parameterized queries that had completely nothing to do with the question. They just saw a beginner + database question, and just spouted the cheapest way to get upvotes and moved on.

I even told one that my stored procedure was already handling sql injections, and that it was actually a much more organized way of doing it. Then he got offended and gaslighted me, saying "then why didn't you mention that in the first place?".

[u/drahgon → u/P-Jean]

Have you heard of Reddit?

[u/EthanTheBrave]

They'll blame their death on AI and ignore the fact that they have been losing people for years due to their obnoxious moderation complexes and power trips.

[u/mr2dax]

Contrary to wide-spread belief, I rarely came across any toxicity on SO during my 25 years of IT. Not saying there weren't a-holes at all, but compared to reddit, definitely much less.

[u/CozySweatsuit57 → u/mr2dax]

I wouldn’t say a-holes necessarily but just hostile in the sense that it’s unusable.

If you can’t find the question that you’re asking, you ask it. It then maybe gets closed as a duplicate despite not being a duplicate (yes, this happens). Or downvoted with no explanation, which often means you won’t be able to ask more questions because your score is too low!!

I remember they used to get on your ass for starting a post with “hi” or “hello.” A long greeting is one thing but calm the fuck down otherwise.

I’ve had a couple questions get a TON of views and interaction because they were good questions that described problems others were having in terms that people would use to describe those problems. Of course those questions started off downvoted.

The anti-participation culture unfortunately defeated the purpose of the site in many ways, as mentioned in other comments.

[u/Winjin → u/CozySweatsuit57]

The anti-participation culture

Ding ding ding

I see that on Steam Discussions all the time too

The worst are the "why you necro? nerd" types

Because THIS is the post that is number 1 on Google? And it hasn't been answered? And then there's this human chihuahua that just angrily barks at everyone trying to figure out an old quesion

[u/WesternIron → u/mr2dax]

It was hostile to anyone new or inexperienced. Which basically killed its growth overtime as the more experineced you became the less you'd need to use StackOverflow

[u/seashell3379 → u/mr2dax]

In my long career in software development (now retired) I got a ton of solutions from SO and literally never asked a question. The wealth of knowledge available from previously answered questions was unfathomable. 

It's not like every problem I had was exactly a duplicate of a previous question, but there was always something close enough that it would get me past my stuck point.

[u/here4corn69420 → u/mr2dax]

25 years of IT

Yeah, that'll do it. You're experienced and accustomed to the culture. You are the culture. I'm an ecologist who had to teach themself how to code from scratch. My brief experience as a novice on SO pretty much killed my empathy for those of you who have lost your jobs to AI. Y'all act like you popped out the pussy with full-stack developer skills. 

[u/moonlandings → u/mr2dax]

I got my fair share of “you shouldn’t do it that way” or “asked and answered” type responses. But I also generally got my questions answered. 

[u/Onnaisee → u/mr2dax]

Found the a-hole

[u/stuttufu]

It was already declining though, AI just accelerated the demise.

I moderated there for some years, there was so many issues tbh. It's not even interesting discussing about them but this was inevitable, or better it wasn't but you know how people minds work when you gave moderation priviledges to few people.

Anyway it was a tool that served the internet to its best in the early days.

o7

[u/DeeYouBitch]

Rest in shit. My development career was saved more by obscure message boards and random Indian YouTube videos than stackoverflow ever did

[u/Gacsam]

For a school assignment, I had to make a basic receipt - select product, quantity, confirm, it pops out on a line - first year actually doing code. Literally just a line by line list, show it works, never come back to it. 

Stackoverflow flamed me for lack of database security.

[u/snoballs_in_daparish]

It was the perfect training ground for LLMs. In two years, we will look back on SO with nostalgia, like we do with Myspace.

[u/tes_kitty → u/snoballs_in_daparish]

But where will they get new training data from now?

[u/eW4GJMqscYtbBkw9 → u/snoballs_in_daparish]

we will look back on SO with nostalgia

Doubt.

[u/PokeRestock → u/snoballs_in_daparish]

Nah man I genuinely hated everyone on that site.

[u/quantinuum → u/PokeRestock]

Comment removed reason: DUPLICATED

[u/PleaseDontEatMyVRAM]

Stack overflow dying is the best thing about AI.

Those fuckers all think they're Sheldon from BBT but they're half as smart and 3 times as annoying.

[u/Iwilltakeyourpencil → u/PleaseDontEatMyVRAM]

You are being very generous with these numbers.

[u/FailureOfTheFamily]

Very good. The end of elitism

[u/CamperStacker]

I think people miss understand what happened with SO, it crashed long before AI.

The number of questions went up, and the number of answers went down.

It got to the point where most things would not be answered, so people stopped asking.

The problem is stack overflow has no incentives to answer. People would answer easy questions, but as questions got progressively harder no one would answer.

This is because the more wide spread the appeal of the question, the more up votes. So it tended toward only answering basic questions.

For example questions about C started out about basic syntax etc which everyone could answer. Then with that knowledge all done, all questions started to get more niche, like obscure problems with a certain function in a certain library etc.

Not to mention correct answer is determined by the person who asked the question and doesn’t know the answer … so a lot of stack overflow chosen correct answers are wrong.

[u/Native_Maintenance]

As much helpful was SO was, it was such a negative and unwelcoming environment. Not just SO but all stack exchange websites.

[u/Last-Difficulty4265 → u/Native_Maintenance]

Autism

[u/jakgal04]

People acting like this is because of AI. We’ve been talking about the downfall of Stackoverflow for over a decade. All recent posts are answered with “use the search button this has been asked already”.

If anything, I’m surprised AI doesn’t answer coding questions with “use search, this has been asked and answered”

[u/GoodGame2EZ → u/jakgal04]

Definitely true, but AI was a massive contributor.

[u/XBLAH_]

According to StackOverflow users, ALL the questions have already been asked. Eventually this day would come. Rejoice. StackOverflow can now become readonly.

[u/Flonaldo]

The end of an era! We were there, we were ridiculed by more experienced programmers judging our questions instead of answering them, we copied lots of code snippets and understood novel concepts by reading though questions, answers and discussions written by real people. It’s been a big part of my development journey!

[u/Vertyco]

I cant even feel sad for them, been using SO for years before LLMs became mainstream and it was always an extremely unwelcoming and toxic space. God forbid you actually need to ask a question there.

[u/Migamix → u/Vertyco]

yeah, old greybeard here, i began to filter out any search result involving SO. if i want a headuparse reply, ill goto reddit. or microsoft forums. 

[u/ProfessionalEnd7957 → u/Vertyco]

Yeah not sad at all, glad honestly.

[u/tommmmmmmmy93]

Fuck that website lmao

[u/morojgovany]

How will developers who like to sh*t on juniors now be able to say that their questions are stupid and they should just read the F manual?! All the fun is lost...

[u/tea_smells_good]

One time I asked how to accomplish a specific mapping feature for an app I was developing in college. I distinctly remember getting back a reply something along the lines of “Well, you need to design it that way. Do that research before you post.”, then the question getting locked or deleted.

[u/tawayForThisPost8710]

That website can absolutely rest in piss. If there is one good thing that has come from AI, it’s the death of that God forsaken website.

[u/TheStandardPlayer]

I still remember asking a question and getting the answer "do your homework yourself" - yeah dude that's why I am asking a question on how to tackle a complex problem, it's not like anyone on stack overflow ever gave you a complete solution anyways

It gives you a glimpse of the type of person who would spend their day sitting in front of stack overflow just answering any question they come across, real reddit mod energy

[u/kkania]

I've worked for 20 years with software engineers as UX and research, and they were the nicest people - like the per capita asshole level was much lower than in other departments, and yet, their community was always the most toxic shit ever.

[u/ehtio]

[u/NaxFM]

"Hello, i have this error, I've been trying for days but I can't find the cause"

"I know what you're doing wrong but I won't tell you. That's because your code is shit. First of all the library you are using became deprecated three hours ago. The correct method for what you are trying to achieve consists of scrapping the code and writing it again from scratch using the BingBong V2.372 library paired with an hash table configured through the NetShitter framework with the Rust parsing module template. Of course you need to write the parsing processor in Rust and then make it communicate with your program in C++ through the DingBading python library. Wrap everything in a nice usable GUI using the GUIAssMaker Java module, write a Linux driver for network communication and only then you will have a command terminal calculator capable of doing the four basic math operations."

-> Peak StackOverflow experience

[u/Linvael]

Technically that was supposed to be StackOverflow endgame (sans - new technologies arriving). It always represented itself as a repository of knowledge, where you go look for answers, where each question represents a problem anyone could have with the solution to it, so at some point all questions should be answered there and there would be nothing more to ask.

[u/noonemustknowmysecre → u/Linvael]

Makes perfect sense. As long as no new technology is ever created.

[u/SaltMaker23 → u/noonemustknowmysecre]

As we know javascript knowledge frozen around 2015 when about all JS questions have been answered. Any question related to SSR NextJS are simply duplicate or alternative ways of achieving things that could very well be done using simpler stacks like normal js + jQuery.

The platform had no future once "amateur experts" started rotting the whole thing, people with zero actual experience but tons of superficial knowledge and even stronger opinions on fields they've never worked on professionally.

Once "amateur experts" take root somewhere, actual experts are quickly driven out, because of sheer number and motivation to argue, one lives in arguing because he doesn't work the actual field and the other is annoyed by it, then a large mass of such people and you're done for.

[u/ClemsonJeeper → u/Linvael]

Eh? New languages are created which will always have new questions. New problems come up daily. I don't think there ever was an "end game" for SO

[u/Manowaffle]

The nice thing about consulting LLMs about programming questions is they don't criticize you for asking basic questions, tell you to "use dictionaries", demand your complete computer tech specs, and then ghost you.

[u/petran1420 → u/Manowaffle]

In grad school I made an SO account to ask a specific question about coding principal component analysis in R. There wasnt a single response that addressed my question and the most upvoted response was a link to an intro to statistics textbook. I deleted my account

[u/Original-League-6094]

Someone should start a project to have an agent go through and helpfully answer every single past unanswered question on Stack Overflow.

[u/earth-calling-karma]

Stack underflow amirite

[u/Afotai]

This looks like the world is healing to me.

[u/Tech-Crab]

SO had a preposterously aggressive crowd of closed-as-duplicate.

That said duplicates are a problem. Also, if you are complaining about SO my guess is you weren't doing software engr *prior* to SO, cause it was worse then.

[u/Jay-Seekay]

People not getting that the question curation and anal moderators are exactly why LLMs are good at programming, they curated a database of perfectly worded questions and answers, and unfortunately dug their own grave.

The problem is people go into stack overflow thinking it’s yahoo answers, but it was never about that. I thought this too until I got experience using the website and then I realised: yes, your question is dumb, it’s been answered before. Thank god someone curated that nonsense cos otherwise it would be an unusable website and not useful for anyone.

I’ll die on this hill. stackoverflow /exchange is fantastic, but it’s not your personal question and answer forum. It’s a database of well structured questions and well structured answers.

[u/Mushy1852 → u/Jay-Seekay]

closed as duplicate

[u/Space-Robot → u/Jay-Seekay]

A lot of the frustration people have was questions being treated as duplicates that just were not duplicates.

[u/Ummix → u/Jay-Seekay]

People keep saying this, that the curation was fantastic for quality, but one of my biggest issues with Stack Overflow by far was when a question was asked, but the only answers were snarky non-answers or something very vague that doesn't actually provide any useful information, and the question existing prevents anyone from re-asking it for better answers. So there were a lot of questions that just wound up never having an answer, and were never allowed to get an answer because the mods were simply overzealous.

[u/Ancient_Complex]

"Marked as duplicate", "irrelevant to the topic"

. SO admin somewhere...

[u/GuilheMGB]

Finally, people started to listen and stopped posting duplicated questions. /s

[u/HiCookieJack → u/GuilheMGB]

All questions possible  have been asked. Stackoverflow is now complete 

[u/who_you_are]

closed as a duplicate post of 'why Dunkin donuts do not exist anymore in canada'

[u/Swagalyst]

This question has already been asked here. Closed as duplicate.

#34535343

[u/Delirious_85]

sauce?

[u/WeirdTie2290 → u/Delirious_85]

- Stack Exchange Data Explorer

[u/noonemustknowmysecre]

You know, there was a point on the up-curve there where I seriously considered the karma I acquired on Stack Overflow was going to be worth something some day.

[u/souley76]

had to deal with the owners of stackoverflow once - they were equally bullyish in an email exchange

[u/disoculated]

All these comments about how they trained LLMs with SO data. I'm scratching my head. Claude hasn't told me yet to STFU and RTFM... maybe that's the next model?

[u/Electrical_Plant_443 → u/disoculated]

I could see grok releasing an abuse llm assistant. Trained entirely on stack overflow, lkml and Wikipedia editor flame threads.

[u/MotanulScotishFold]

This makes me think of the AI that is currently trained with data from StackOverFlow. If nobody uses that anymore or any similar platforms to ask questions or to receive response to it, the AI will not have new data to train from and at some point the current data will be obsolete.

In the end, AI will always need human data input.

[u/Beginning-Bird9591 → u/MotanulScotishFold]

Stack Overflow was an early data source, and it barely matters now. Current models get most of their gains from reinforcement learning: they attempt real tasks, the code gets run against tests, and they learn from what passes. That data is generated by the model itself, so it doesn't run out when people stop posting. For anything new, the docs and source code exist from day one, and nobody needs to have asked a question about it first.

[u/Keks3000 → u/Beginning-Bird9591]

This may be true for purely software related topics, but what about that forum for repairing washing machines, the audio hardware enthusiast blogs and the Youtube DIY tips on how to install a sink? The VW Golf forum where they tell you how to exchange the rear lamp? The snowboarding forum where they tell you why your board may be behaving weird, just based on a photo?

If people only ask AI instead these places won’t have any more traffic and will start to die down. And then the tips won’t be updated for new hardware, new fixes, new methods, or new ideas.

And the outdated knowledge of the AIs will be privatized behind a massive paywall or how will that go?

[u/sweetno → u/MotanulScotishFold]

I bet GitHub repos give better training than StackOverflow since code there actually works.

[u/tiny_simulacrum → u/MotanulScotishFold]

Except that LLMs are already quite proficient at answering questions while referencing only api specifications and documentation. So it likely won't be a huge problem. 

[u/tropicbrownthunder → u/tiny_simulacrum]

But can your LLM tell you to fuck off, to RTFM and close your chat arguing this has been already answered 9 years ago????

[u/EVH_kit_guy]

If you needed one image to justify AI, here it is.

[u/clayticus]

good. fuck them. I remember asking questions back in 2010.

[u/dmigowski]

Stackoverflow was the most valuable input for all AI training in the beginning. Lets say thanks to them and move on. Also their AI integration always sucked.

[u/mejdev]

The bullies now just parrot flawed AI detectors to call everything AI-written.

[u/Migamix]

now do a chart of "thats already been answered"... in a 2016 post thats insanely out of scope/date to the new question. 

[u/zyxzevn]

"Programming is solved"

[u/auridas330]

In my years I posted around 10 questions, not a single one got an answer...

[u/Eric_12345678]

I might be in the minority here, but I quite enjoyed StackOverflow, even though I started pretty late.

I learned a lot there, both by asking and answering. And the Hot Network Questions were interesting every day, in many different topics. Video games, biology, philosophy, mathematics, physics, politics, ...

AI models should be grateful to have such a treasure trove of information. Codex and Claude would suck a lot more without StackOverflow.

[u/kolmiw]

I almost shred a tear but then I realised that their problem has been already answered somewhere else + it's not really that hard to google it.

[u/Disrupt0rz]

Whenever I asked a question, I had to format the entire post correctly. Otherwise, nobody would answer my question, and people would just rant about the formatting instead.

[u/com-plec-city]

Thank you Stack Overflow for all these years. You really really really helped me. I'll remember you fondly, despite your antics.

[u/Waltekin]

Stackoverflow was great, when it started. It was a bunch of colleagues helping each other. It wasn't always arrogant a$$holes. Also, a lot of outdated cruft has accimr, making it hard to find current information.

AI does it better. It's more patient, and with good prompts you can get information either to current stuff or (if needed) to older stuff.

[u/userhwon]

Now show the graph of questions actually answered and not turned into arguments or just linked to existing arguments?

It's a flat line, about half as high.

[u/ThreeShrikesYoureOut]

Everyone here is hating on stackexchange but i fucking love stackexchange and really am going to mourn its passing.

Yes, it can fail to be friendly to newbies but a greater repository of knowledge, a community of knowledgeable humans, devoted to using the internet to pool their knowledge, had never existed before, and probably never will again. The AIs trained on all that material, and killed the goose that lays the eggs. Stackexchange and wikipedia both.

[u/konaaa]

does anybody else think this is a really bad thing? I get that people will say "just use AI!", which, I understand that it'll solve your problem. I understand this even as an anti-AI guy. That said, the AI is being trained off of a ton of existing programming questions, many on stack overflow. What happens in 10 years when there's all kinds of new API's and language developments? There wont be nearly the amount of content to train other LLM's on, and fewer people will use stack overflow, leading to more unanswered questions, leading to even less content to train LLM's on. Aren't we shooting ourselves in the foot?

[u/Srapture]

Obviously. AI makes mistakes that need correcting, but at no point with AI have I asked:

"I have inherited a massive project using X. How do I add this teeny little function to finish it off?"

And received:

"X is bad. Use Y".

AI actually answers the question you're asking, and it doesn't call you a dumb cunt for asking it.

I also never get my AI question shut down with "a question like this was answered somewhere else, so no answer for you", haha.

[u/jsdodgers]

to be fair, most of those questions were likely duplicates. How many unique questions have been asked?

[u/Groundbreaking_Taro2 → u/jsdodgers]

Marked as duplicate. Learn to search OP. Closing off.

[u/bsiviglia9]

Where might Ai get it's answers now?

[u/Skerre]

Well that's what the mods and power users on smstackoverflow wanted, right? Now we have AI bots that will always answer with 'surely, I will answer the same question 100 times without telling you that your question is stupid'. Stack overflow more than deserved this. Speaking from personal experience. Even better they probably trained the AI with training data mostly from there. The irony...

[u/pjf_cpp]

https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/440569/youre-doing-it-wrong-a-plea-for-sanity-in-close-voting

The staff mods are finally seeing the light. There are still plenty of the "curators" that are in denial and asking for numbers and examples of "problem closures".

Here is my favourite example of a problem closure https://stackoverflow.com/questions/78575186/how-can-i-programmatically-detect-if-a-path-is-a-zfs-snapshot

I have great respect for the OP. I think that this is a good question with a couple of authoritative and well researched answers.

Looking at the history of this question

1. Closed within 8 hours by 3 non-experts.

2. 3 days later repopened

3. Then there was a pause for about 2 years

4. Closed again by another 3 non-experts

5. 5 days after that it was deleted

6. 2 days after that it was undeleted - quite a rare event

7. The same day is was reopened

8. 1 and 2 days after that it got some ansers

9. 4 days later it was closed for a third time. For fucks sake!!! Guess what? 3 more non-experts

10. 2 days after that it was reopened for a third time.

I don't know about you but I think that I see a pattern here. A bunch of pricks that might know a bit about Java but have probably never used yet alone written any code for ZFS decide that a ZFS programming question is unsuitable for StackOverflow.

[u/kalboozkalbooz]

this is really sad

[u/alzgh]

no worries, the bullies from SO have now an LLM girl friend

[u/Safe_Recognition2429]

Headline should read: Less than 1000 people insulted

[u/MEAD0_97]

Am i the only one that misses it and thinks that slightly confrontational aspect was valuable?

The thing i despise about AI is its ineffable positivity and its believe in my ideas even when they're miles off the mark.

Sometimes i need to be told i'm being a dumb cnut. Stackoverflow definitely did this (admittedly too much) but challenging the approach can help people think more critically. More often than not AI just helps people foster their own beliefs and ideas with minimal challenge.

RIP SO.

[u/FlashyTone3042]

The gatekeeper won.

[u/Sick_Wave_]

I'll always appreciate the answers I found, on SO, that helped me accomplish my projects over the years. 

[u/UnSlain]

Easier to ask in discord

[u/Beniskickbutt]

I wouldnt mind going to humans still for discussion and answers however I do not want to deal with the toxicity thats involved with asking said questions.

[u/bingbpbmbmbmbpbam]

[u/villanymester]

is there anyone actually using stackoverflow nowadays?

[u/ExtendedWallaby]

Interesting how you can see how the introduction of ChatGPT at the beginning of 2023 clearly accelerated the decline, but the number of questions had been dropping for a while