- I agree that Stack Overflow is on a downward trend, but so are documentation sites for every library, and Wikipedia. Much like one of my teachers used to say, once we loose print media, we loose the basis for all the other media, and it will all turn to shit. I hope we don’t experience the same here…
- Since Wikipedia is a such an institution, I don’t think it is going anywhere, but Stack Overflow is headed for the chopping block. On the contrary, I believe the smaller Stack Exchange will see more engagement, as they become amore prominent community, since Reddit (really the only other option), is no longer what it once was.
- Personally, I try to reduce my use of generative AI to answer questions that are just an easy web search away, mainly because of the carbon footprint, but also because I want these websites to continue to survive. We used to believe nothing was every deleted from the internet, but that is no longer the case, and too much of our history is disappearing too fast.
- Generative AI has its use in creating code and agentic workflows, but I think we should continue to leave answering questions to the websites that do them best.
podcast the-changelog programming tech open-source stack-overflow ai