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292

The Fall of Stack Overflow (observablehq.com)

submitted 1 year ago by trashhalo@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org

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Over the past one and a half years, Stack Overflow has lost around 50% of its traffic. This decline is similarly reflected in site usage, with approximately a 50% decrease in the number of questions and answers, as well as the number of votes these posts receive.

The charts below show the usage represented by a moving average of 49 days.

What happened?

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[–] BurningnnTree@lemmy.one 31 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Why is everyone saying this is because Stack Overflow is toxic? Clearly the decline in traffic is because of ChatGPT. I can say from personal experience that I've been visiting Stack Overflow way less lately because ChatGPT is a better tool for answering my software development questions.

[–] ShrimpsIsBugs@feddit.de 17 points 1 year ago

The timing doesn't really add up though. ChatGPT was published in November 2022. According to the graphs on the website linked, the traffic, the number of posts and the number of votes all already were in a visible downfall and at their lowest value of more than 2 years. And this isn't even considering that ChatGPT took a while to get picked up into the average developer's daily workflow.

Anyhow though, I agree that the rise of ChatGPT most likely amplified StackOverflow's decline.

[–] floofloof@lemmy.ca 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Half the time when I ask it for advice, ChatGPT recommends nonexistent APIs and offers examples in some Frankenstein code that uses a bit of this system and a bit of that, none of which will work. But I still find its hit rate to be no worse than Stack Overflow, and it doesn't try to humiliate you for daring to ask.

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[–] throwsbooks@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 year ago

Over the last five years, I'd click a link to Stack Overflow while googling, but I've never made an account because of the toxicity.

But yeah, chatGPT is definitely the nail in the coffin. Being able to give it my code and ask it to point out where the annoying bug is... is amazing.