Comments

• holycrap@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  I think this has as much to do with Google being shit at finding stuff lately as it does llms like chatGPT

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  • Calyhre@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    You can even see the decline in posts and votes before GPT became mainstream. This definitely look more like search engine failing to get rid of those cheap copycats.

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    • zatanas@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Agreed. For me, making it so that the search engine ignores -string was one of the biggest set backs.

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    • Bipta@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Wait, what? On Google??

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  • raltoid@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Don’t forget that Duck Duck Go is even worse at it now. It will literally change your results if you go back after clicking a link.

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• ericjmorey@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  I bet this is directly related to ChatGPT

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  • SuperFola@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    People prefer having something generating shitty code and not checking it, instead of asking or searching on internet for a substantially better solution

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    • li10@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      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.

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    • gosling@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      You mean shitty code which you can just check and ask them to change in almost real time, over posting your question on SO and waiting for months for an answer?

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    • ofak@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Chatgpt is still a tool and it’s up to the user how to use it. If you google “bolognese recipe” you get one result; if you Google “traditional ragu from Bologna” you get another. Same for ChatGPT.

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    • JesusTheCarpenter@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      At least ChatGPT will not flag the question as duplicate.

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    • EatMyDick@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      You are delusional and will be left behind if that is your view point. The code is usually largely accurate only needing a few tweaks. Easily one of the most powerful scaffolding and learning tool I’ve used in 25 years. Our developers embracing it are more efficient then ever and passing static analysis, owasp scans, coding standards just fine if not better than cranky old devs who think they couldn’t possibly be helped by a dumb machine.

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    • Aidan@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      You can have it generate shitty code and then compare it against examples it finds online to iterate that code. Also, it was trained on the whole internet, including those good solutions, and can often reproduce them on its own. but you have to tell it to do all that, rather than just asking for the code.

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  • argh_another_username@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    [deleted]

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    • TheBat@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Can you write a code that would sort the input string from smallest to largest?

      You would like to have it, wouldn’t you? You fucken nerd.

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  • Papercrane@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I thought chatgpt is kinda shit now since the newest updates

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    • li10@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I think it’s overblown tbh.

      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.

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    • darkmarx@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I agree that it isn’t as good as it was. The last two updates have definitely decreased its effectiveness for multiple things, not just dev. It is still my starting point when looking for something. It is just not as good as it used to be.

      Obviously, you can’t take what it gives at face value, but you shouldn’t do that from SO either. In general, I see faster results using GPT than I do with Google and SO. You can also extend the responses with any customization or changes specific to what you are trying to do, where you can’t with SO.

      I’m not saying SO is bad. Not by any stretch. I still use it a lot. It just isn’t my starting point anymore.

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  • varzaman@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    ChatGPT isn’t that good at code generation lol.

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    • ericjmorey@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Doesn’t need to be good. Just good enough that people need SO less often. If GitHub Copilot gives a code suggestion, I don’t need to look up some syntax or some method I forgot. I’m reminded, and can see that it’s correct. No searching online required.

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    • Gork@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      It’s a little more decent than you give credit for. I use it all the time for easy generic subroutines and functions. It struggles a bit with specific, complex requests but is generally pretty versatile as a miniature code assistant. It’s good at catching human errors like loops starting or ending at the wrong specified integer, so I use it as a debugging tool.

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• danhab99@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  IDK what shitoverflow gets out of being so fucking toxic. I asked one dumb question and I’m basically banned from posting on the website.

  It feels like they’re trying to be a sort of “wikipedia” of every programming problem and solution. The problem is that eventually everything will be posted, and everyone will be banned from the website.

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  • bh11235@infosec.pub ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    You lack vision, but I see a place where people get blocked and their questions opened then immediately closed as duplicates. Open and closed, open and closed all day, all night. Soon, where the internet once stood will be a string of condescending experts, admonitions that “you shouldn’t do that, do Y instead”, pleas for information closed as off-topic. Passive aggression, spiteful ego contests and wonderful, wonderful karma meters reaching as far as the eye can see. My God, it’ll be beautiful.

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    • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      “you shouldn’t do that, do Y instead”

      That’s one of my favorites: ignore the problem, only pick on the scope we can’t change.

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  • rmam@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    It feels like they’re trying to be a sort of “wikipedia” of every programming problem and solution.

    It looks to me that they could effectively address that by improving their search combined with question grooming, and not shutting down posters.

    I mean, what’s a naive poster asking dumb questions other than a new user wanting to contribute? Is this the people they want to insult away?

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  • MBM@lemmings.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    The problem is that eventually everything will be posted, and everyone will be banned from the website.

    I don’t think they see that as a problem, that’s the goal

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  • nic2555@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    It feels like they’re trying to be a sort of “wikipedia” of every programming problem and solution.

    That is exactly what stackoverflow is supposed to be. It’s not there to answer your question about “why is my IF statement not working”, it’s there to be a resource for all developper. How is a question about your specific problem gonna helps anyone ? If you haven’t, take the time to read the “how to ask” section, it describes what kind of questions are acceptable and what kind are not.

    There is, obviously, some proper questions that should not have been deleted, but most of them are not suited for the site, as they don’t bring anything to other developers.

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  • astral_avocado@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    You were able to post on there at all? Don’t they have extremely high barriers to entry for even question comments?

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    • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Not only post, but I have a question that still feeds me residuals even now.

      I got a nastygram because I was editing the questions to follow a proper style and form (AP) and some people got upset that my comments were more “run on sentence” and “emails and helps both sound wrong as nouns for the same reason” instead of something like “there-there, Timmy”.

      So I said “you can have free editing, or the next guy can be a people person instead.” And they agreed.

      So I’m read-only there now too. :-D

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• harmonea@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Most of the comments here seem to be arguing whether it's better to get help now from SO or ChatGPT, but this is a pretty short-sighted mindset.

  What happens when the next new standard comes out that ChatGPT hasn't been trained on? If SO tanks and dies, where will you go?

  I'm not saying use a lesser resource, I'm saying this is kinda tragic and I hope they can sustain themselves; AI is propped up by human input and can't train itself.

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  • gosling@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Does it really though? It seems to me that once you nail the general intelligence, you’ll just need to provide the supplemental information (e.g. new documentations) for it to give an accurate response.

    Bing already somewhat does this by connecting their bot to internet searches

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    • gnus_migrate@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      We’re not able to properly define general intelligence, let alone build something that qualifies as intelligent.

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    • ImpossibleRubiksCube@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      LLMs do not relate to general intelligence in any manner.

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    • alokir@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I was working on a hobby project where I used a niche framework in a somewhat uncommon way. I was stuck on a concept that I think the documentation didn’t explain well enough, at least for me, and I couldn’t find any resource on it aside from the docs.

      I asked Bing to write a piece of code that does what I wanted and explain each line. It was perfectly working and the explanation was also understandable. All it did was search for its official documentation. It really blew my mind.

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    • MBM@lemmings.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      What if the documentation is lacking? Experienced users will still know how a library works because they’ve tried some things, but that information won’t be available if they never talk about it online

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  • gnus_migrate@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Hey, if people are going to go back to reading manuals like we’re in the 1980’s again is it such a bad thing? /s

    It’s insane how a single tool managed to completely destroy the value collectively created by people in over a decade.

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    • astral_avocado@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      That single tool is still propped up by that collective decade of knowledge. ChatGPT would be nothing without sites like stackoverflow

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  • topinambour_rex@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    We will go to the documentation.

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    • peopleproblems@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Oh god, oh no.

      Do you realize what that will mean? My coworkers will have to learn how to understand documentation standards that rely on anything but “self documenting code.”

      I am already “an expert (lol @ my salary)” because I read shit they don’t bother looking up. We’re truly doomed.

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  • lemmyvore@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Crazy idea, what about a “federated” search. Hook up the websites’ internal search engines to an aggregator.

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  • varsock@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    very good point! I find myself using ChatGPT more for references and I am also afraid what will happen if there isn’t enough “human generated content” to train on. I can picture an edge case a chunk of the internet is AI generated content (with even users at the wheel). The the next wave of AI will train on previous gen AI output

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  • loics2@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    We go back to expertsexchange

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  • pgetsos@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    AI should be trained by itself though. I just wouldn't call LLMs "AI" as a term

    Also, it shall be possible in the future to just feed it the documentation and have answers. Obviously we are still nowhere near yet

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• ZombieZookeeper@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Maybe I would post more if I didn’t get ignored, or my questions immediately get marked to be closed without comment.

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  • Sl00k@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I’ve had an account for almost 10 years that I use at least every other day at work, and have seen plenty of questions I CAN answer but apparently don’t have the “reputation” to.

    Honestly a really dumb system imo.

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    • ZombieZookeeper@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Nobody OWES me an answer, but if I tend not to get one, I’m not going to keep bothering with SO.

      Now, the anonymous cowards who mark a question to be closed without commenting are a different story.

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    • proton_lynx@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Man, infuriating! I had a problem that was being asked on stackoverflow but with no solution. Later, I found the solution reading some obscure parts of the docs from certain vendor. I was gonna post it there so everyone that had the same problem could find it and solve it. But I don’t have enough reputation :/

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  • ono@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    It might not be much of a loss. The average quality of answers there has been mediocre for as long as I can remember.

    Lots of people eager to earn points by showing off what they think they know, relatively few who truly understand the nontrivial issues, and the former often drowning out the latter. The result is like Reddit for programmers.

    The moderation system also seems to optimize for mediocrity, often closing questions as opinion-based if there’s even a hint of nuance.

    I used to spend time there every week answering questions on subjects that I understand well, but competing with broken incentives in an ocean of know-it-all personalities was tiring, so I almost never bother any more.

    I would like to see something replace it. I don’t know how what form that should take. A collective knowledge base with a culture like that on Hacker News would be interesting, though I don’t know if that’s feasible without someone selecting and paying good moderators.

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• alternativeninja@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  This doesn’t tell us much without also including the quality of the posts. Are we sure this isn’t just idiots who ask stupid question that can be found on Google over and over not doing that now that they have chatgpt

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  • abhibeckert@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Well, for starters, the fall started six months before ChatGPT existed.

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    • rmam@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      For me the real problem with Stack Overflow, as someone who was one of the earliest users of the service, is when you ask a question now you don’t actually get a good answer anymore. Often your question just gets deleted by moderators.

      This. I recall that I posted some question over a framework and if it supported a feature, and the question was shut down because a moderator complained it lacked a minimum working example. Unreal.

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    • Citizen@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Do we have a community on lemmy to ask questions like stackoverflow?

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    • Rakn@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Ah. Feels similar to the relevance discussions on the German Wikipedia. Gatekeeping at its finest.

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• Simulation6@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  I am not sure when this started, but google searches now sort by paid content first rather then relevant content first, so Stack Overflow started to drop down into page 2 or more.

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• canpolat@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  observablehq.com/…/the-fall-of-stack-overflow

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  • BenLloydPearson@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Oh wow, thanks. I didn’t realize that making this an image post got rid of the link

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    • canpolat@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Yeah, I don’t know if it’s a bug or a feature. I got a similar problem before with one of my posts. I think a workaround would be to post it as a link and paste the image in the Body.

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• bad_alloc@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Is there a fediverse alternative yet?

  Also, if you are a technical person I urge you to start a blog where you document problems you solve. It’s a great ressource for others and a resumé for you.

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• Rooki@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Stack Overflow reached its maximum “duplicates”. So new users arent engaged on asking anything because it is of course already a duplicate of xyz.

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  • lemmyvore@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Tbf it’s a normal problem to have, it wasn’t meant to be a forum. But it looks like they haven’t considered what to do with the moving parts of the community once they reached content saturation. 😄

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    • lolcatnip@reddthat.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      So why did they structure it as a forum?

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  • cestvrai@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Same thing came to my mind. Is it so bad if the content grows at a slower rate and the traffic of adding new content drops to a new equilibrium.

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  • crystal@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Isn’t it a good thing if your question is marked as a duplicate? That means you now have lots of answers readily available which already answered the question.

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    • Rooki@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      But then would you be like “Oh boy let me get slapped next time too”

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    • Hector_McG@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Not really. A question that’s simply closed as a duplicate isn’t going to get any answers, and the answers to the original question, while they may have once been reasonable enough to be accepted, might be outdated.

      Languages move on and add features, and closing any question as a duplicate precludes new, modern features that provides better way to answer the original question.

      A lot of content on SO is dated to say the least, precisely because reputation harvesters with a dated knowledge of the language are overly keen on closing questions.

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• witx@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  I really hope it burns to the ground. One of the most toxic dev “forums” I’ve seen. I made a point of never clicking their site when looking for answers even if it took me longer.

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  • iByteABit@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    It is quite toxic but come on, you can’t say it isn’t an essential too nowadays. The nitpicky attitudes and downvote barrages kinda enforce good quality answers besides being toxic as hell sometimes

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• digdilem@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Not arguing with the other possible reasons given, but it can be really hard to get started with SO as anything other than a reader. Gaining enough points to comment, answer, or even answer a comment feels really hard now that so many questions are already answered well.

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• Jagermo@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  All questions have obviously been answered.

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• varsock@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  A lot of my answers I get answered with ChatGPT. And I can always ask ChatGPT to tell me where I can look to verify the answer. I find myself on stack overflow for very specific or very technical topics.

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• dvektor@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  It’s funny how if everyone just went and “read the documentation” like they tend to obnoxiously tell you to do… stackoverflow wouldn’t exist. Personally I go and look for things I can answer if someone asks a question that I know will get obliterated but I can tell they just need some help. I’ll try to answer it before it gets downgraded and they get banned

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  • monk@lemmy.unboiled.info ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Have you ever wanted to do something from the uncharted area? Encountered bad documentation? This is what it’s supposed to be for, not handholding.

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    • Pantoffel@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Uncharted is quite subjective. I used SO most when I was starting out in SE. Looking back through the questions I posted, most of them were very much beginner questions that I would just know nowadays or know where to look for. That was what I used SO for. Beginners asking veterans for help. The least of them were due to bad documentation or exploring uncharted territory. As I grew more confident in the field, I stopped using SO more and more. The latest only for best practices on simple problems I don’t want to reinvent. And exactly those cases GPT now solves faster and I’d be surprised if not even better than SO posts.

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• Myrbolg@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Pretty incredible. What happened in early 2022? It was not yet the time of GPTs, so?

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• shiveyarbles@beehaw.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  I mostly end up with answers from a handful of top tier devs… I’m kind of glad they prevent junk and noise so I get the answers I need, ymmv

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• DharkStare@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Where exactly am I supposed to go for programming questions if SO goes under? I don’t suppose there’s a Fediverse equivalent?

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  • Die4Ever@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    well there’s programming.dev

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  • Ullallulloo@civilloquy.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Codidact is a non-profit, open-source alternative run by (mostly former) SE people.

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  • UlrikHD@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Language specific communities

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• drturtle@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  This tracks with my own experience of relying more on ChatGPT for coding assistance rather than searching Google (which would then lead to me to StackOverflow). ChatGPT has just been a faster way to get to the answer I’m looking for. StackOverflow is still a fantastic resource, though.

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• tiny_electron@beehaw.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  I can see for myself that I go way less often since I use github copilot

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• Auzy@beehaw.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  In the past I tried to submit something to it, but didn’t have enough reputation or whatever.

  In general though, I’ll try to use copilot first

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  • Mkengine@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Can you give an example how you use copilot? Why is it better than using chatgpt and how exactly do I use it?

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• hygieia@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  It’s almost as if devs have found a new way to have their code written for them… 😅

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