Comment on Stack Overflow in freefall: 78 percent drop in number of questions
micka190@lemmy.world 2 days ago
According to a Stack Overflow survey from 2025, 84 percent of developers now use or plan to use AI tools, up from 76 percent a year earlier. This rapid adoption partly explains the decline in forum activity.
As someone who participated in the survey, I’d recommend everyone take anything regarding SO’s recent surveys with a truckfull of salt. The recent surveys have been unbelievable biased with tons of leading questions that force you to answer in specific ways. They’re basically completely worthless in terms of statistics.
chaosCruiser@futurology.today 2 days ago
Realistically though, asking an LLM what’s wrong with my code is a lot faster than scrolling through 50 posts and reading the ones that talk about something almost relevant.
rob_t_firefly@lemmy.world 2 days ago
It’s even faster to ask your own armpit what’s wrong with your code, but that alone doesn’t mean you’re getting a good answer from it
MagicShel@lemmy.zip 2 days ago
If you get a good answer just 20% of the time, an LLM is a smart first choice. Your armpit can’t do that. And my experience is that it’s much better than 20%. Though it really depends a lot of the code base you’re working on.
chaosCruiser@futurology.today 2 days ago
Also depends on your level of expertise. If you have beginner questions, an LLM should give you the correct answer most of the time. If you’re an expert, your questions have no answers. Usually, it’s something like an obscure firmware bug edge case even the manufacturer isn’t aware of. Good luck troubleshooting that without writing your own drivers and libraries.
avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
How do you know it’s a good answer? That requires prior knowledge that you might have. My juniors repeatedly demonstrate they’ve no ability to tell whether an LLM solution is a good one or not. It’s like copying from SO without reading the comments, which they quickly learn not to do because it doesn’t pass code review.
PlutoniumAcid@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Also depends on how you phrase the question to the LLM, and whether it har access to source files.
A web chat session can’t do a lot, but an interactive shell like Claude Code is amazing - if you know how to work it.
chaosCruiser@futurology.today 2 days ago
My armpits refuse to talk to me. I’ll take that as a sign that overflow errors are a feature, not bug.