We might have been slower to abandon Stack Overflow if it wasn't a toxic hellhole
If you were a software developer prior to 2024, you probably used Stack Overflow. It was a reliable place to find good answers to many technical questions. If you asked any questions there, you probably also know that it was a toxic hellhole—you often got criticized for not having basic knowledge or not understanding error messages.
This isn't exactly a secret. In 2018, Stack Overflow published a blog post entitled Stack Overflow Isn't Very Welcoming. It's Time for That to Change.
I don't know about you, but I never felt like behavior on the site got any better. Any time I asked a question I braced for impact. Was I about to get smacked down?
Recently, a graph of the total number of Stack Overflow questions over time started making rounds on the internet:
This graph shows a steady decline in usage from about 2017 to 2023 and then usage falls off a cliff. In a Reddit posts asking why developers are moving away from Stack Overflow, one user put it pretty succinctly:
"Because I can get an answer from an LLM (which does need to be verified) in less than a minute versus the hours or days I would have to wait to get a toxic and potentially useless reply on stackoverflow. They should really downsize or just kill the company it’s a relic of the past and most developers won’t miss it."
This is how a lot of us feel. Developer sentiment on generative AI can be mixed, but we know that at least it won't be an asshole to us, unlike many "helpers" on Stack Overflow.
One question I have is if we would have been slower to abandon Stack Overflow if it was a welcoming community. I don't know. Getting answers from generative AI would still have been faster.
I suspect we may have fought a little harder to preserve Stack Overflow in some capacity if it was a positive place. And I think this should be a lesson to other communities out there: instead of relying solely on being necessary, you should also be a positive place. Because when the next thing comes along and makes you less necessary, people won't hesitate to abandon you.
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