The Fall of Stack Overflow

https://programming.dev/post/931727

The Fall of Stack Overflow - programming.dev

Stack Overflow has seen a substantial decline in traffic over the last year that appears to be accelerating.

I bet this is directly related to ChatGPT
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.

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

When we use forums there’s also an opportunity to correct (or be corrected) on how we deal with problems.

I’ve seen a few times people asking how to do X while they’re actually trying to do Y. ChatGPT would gladly direct them to the wrong path.