Comment on Stack Overflow seeks rebrand as traffic continues to plummet – which is bad news for developers

Max_P@lemmy.max-p.me ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

• WolfLink@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  The annoying thing about the dupe policy is sometimes the answer does change and the accepted answer to the existing question is from 5 years ago.

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  • eronth@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Yup. Infuriating. I can’t remember how many times I saw a thread of someone asking my version of a question that was then closed as duplicate linking to an older one that wasn’t the right version and therefore the fix was irrelevant or at least not best practice anymore.

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  • CoffeeGhost@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    It also doesn’t help when the answer is “yeah just disable this feature that is used for security. That fixes the issue” but that really isn’t the best solution

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• mesamunefire@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  The article also goes into it, but I think the invent of AI and asking somewhat specific questions may also explain the decline. If you can get a result that can get you 90% of the way there with an AI that used stack overflow as a resource, theres no reason to actually ask on stack overflow. Its faster to go on the AI result or go on google/bing/etc...etc... that has the answer right there on the page.

  And the redesign....its pretty bad in my opinion.

  I was once downvoted answering a question on a library....that I created on stack overflow. Still makes me laugh.

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  • Max_P@lemmy.max-p.me ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    The graph suggests it started declining well before AI became mainstream. I’m sure it accelerates it, but it had already long peaked.

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    • mesamunefire@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Yep I agree. Its a combo of many different things.

      I cant tell you the last time I was on SO for a question. its been that long.

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• i_am_not_a_robot@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Yep, I’ve never needed to ask a question on Stack Overflow as everything I’ve searched for has been answered already… or I’ve looked elsewhere for the answer as I’m not allowed to upvote, downvote or ask questions on it anyway due to lack of karma (or whatever they call it). No wonder it’s in decline if nobody new is allowed to contribute, and every new question is closed as a duplicate anyway.

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  • Speculater@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    The barrier to entry is silly.

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    • DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      The barrier to entry is why it’s a good place for answers and not Reddit-quality responses.

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      • HazyHerbivore@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Reddit can give quality tech responses though. The voting system on SO would be sufficient.

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• ChillPenguin@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I’ve always been afraid of opening questions on stack overflow. To the point that I’d rather just figure it out myself.

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• RobotZap10000@feddit.nl ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I believe so. Whenever I have a problem, I look for an answer in the following order: search engine > reading a forum post > documentation > writing a forum post. I usually don’t work on bleeding-edge software, so somebody probably has already asked my question and received an answer too. If it hasn’t explicitly been asked yet, it might have already been answered in the documentation. Furthermore, as you said, Stack Overflow would much sooner delete your post for being a duplicate of a 21-year-old post than provide an answer to your question. There are other (and sometimes newer) tools out there that can provide the same answer without putting up so much resistance to you simply attempting to use them. If they want their traffic back, they could start there, instead of “rebranding”.

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• letsgo@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Not in technology, it’s a rapidly evolving field. Answers that might have been absolutely perfect five years ago can now be irrelevant archaic trivia.

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• WarlordSdocy@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I mean there’s always gonna be new libraries or frameworks or whatever that will have their own questions to be asked. I think the problem is at a certain point you’ve reached the maximum audience you can appeal to. Which I feel StackOverflow very much has but of course corporations have to keep making greater and greater profits so once you maximize audience you have to find other methods for profit. Which is what leads to rebrand stuff like this.

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• coolmojo@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  How about this one then

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