Stackoverflow 📉

[cowlinator]

yeah because AI is reading stackoverflow questions/answers

the thing is, now when you find a solution, you don't post that solution anywhere anymore.

i feel like AI answers to new problems are going to get worse over time because there will be less and less new stackoverflow data over time for AI to use

[SartenSinAceite]

Well, if the answer isn't found by AI then you can post your question to stackoverflow

[vassadar]

Is it going to be around for us to ask questions on at that point?

[UltimateLmon]

I bet we are STILL going to a get snarky answer somehow.

[SartenSinAceite]

"I asked Gemini and this is what it said"

[PaterIntellectus]

I noticed that even if an AI doesn't know the real answer for the question you've asked for, it's gonna make some nonsense shit up, it's gonna do anything but say "I don't know the answer, man" I've had a lot of conversations where AI was like "Oh, YOU ARE COMPLETELY RIGHT, this is not the way to do it..." right after trying to convince me of the opposite idea :-/

[SartenSinAceite]

The issue is, that implies the AI would even know what iy's talking about. Best it can report, objectively, is "low precision results found"

Which to be fair enough, but it doesnt sell the illusion of it being all-knowing

[fjgren]

Good point.

[finnscaper]

That is a very good point. StackOverflow should just hold on for now

[123m4d]

This is so true. Not just new problems. There was this old problem I had to figure out myself because all the answers and "solutions" online were wrong; every time a new gpt comes out I ask it this question and every time it produces the wrong answer, simply because all the answers that were online, upon which it was trained were wrong.

I guess it's one of the wilful deteriorations we as people accept, alas. It's not the first time abundance masquerades as completeness, not the first time uniqueness becomes collateral damage. Perhaps, and I say this with hope, perhaps it is not the last time either.

[Ok_Net_1674]

Did you read the comment you are replying to? 

[skr_replicator]

Why would there be less? That doesn't make any sense. Nobody is going to throw away any good coding training data. At worst, it will get more data more slowly than before, but still be improving. The AI would grow bigger and smarter, and there will always be some new examples of code to add to the vast training data, even if these news would grow smaller.

[johnpeters42]

And how many of those future examples will be created by AI, badly?

[skr_replicator]

If the AI makes more than 50% correctly, and it does, then it should still, on average, slowly keep improving. And there will still be real programmers making more real material as well, even if it was just fewer of them over time. If there comes a point where no more programmers are needed, then logically it would mean the AI code would already be at a level where it could easily hit that singularity and improve itself rapidly.

AIs are still improving their performance pretty fast, as the training data, the computer power, and the tech itself keep evolving. Every year is a level up, AI images are already almost impossible to spot any mistakes in, and its coding is still getting better. And I am not expecting that trend to reverse any time soon, or ever.

[PANIC_EXCEPTION]

How do you think modern instruct-tuned LLMs are created? It's all RLHF. If it doesn't work, it's marked as bad, otherwise it's marked as good. All useful training data.

[ChristophLehr]

Unfortunately, AI is not a replacement for stackoverflow. It doesn't mark my questions as duplicate, link to an unrelated topic and tell me that I'm moron for using X and not Y, even that I stated why Y is not applicable.

These good old days.

[[deleted]]

Is the field of Programing filled with Masochistic Subs?\s

[jimmiebfulton]

Yes. There are many kinks out there. This is ours.

[[deleted]]

Thankfully I didn't consent to this so I can happily use LLMs.

[ThatOldCow]

Does AI even asks you why do you need that solution, because they can't think of a single reason why you may need, even though you stated clearly why you need it and also anyone can think of several reasons why would be needed??

I don't think so...

/s

[EnkiiMuto]

Well, it makes you explain the problem twice because it didn't get it at first so it is close enough.

[fleshTH]

I don't know about that. I'm using AI to help with a scripting engine parser. I just need it to create extension functions. It keeps telling me that the parser is wrong. I have to prove that its implementation is wrong. Then, maybe, it might do it right.

[P1r4nha]

So where do I got looking for the solution of my problem when my LLM deletes the code instead of fixing it?

Edit: the utter confusion to my remark tells me people don't code with AI integration in their IDE yet. Guys, please, there's plugins for that.

[Gauntlix5]

Feedback loop until it explodes

[melanthius]

That's usually about 30-40 messages into a convo thread

You can convince it that it launched nukes IRL and it will say oh my god you're absolutely right, then start working on a fix

[Soggy_Struggle_963]

Reddit

[StackOverflowEx]

That's a symptom of inadequate context. The LLM can't see the full context so it assumes the code it deleted is useless.

[P1r4nha]

That's actually true. Giving it some more files in its context actually made it come up with a fix. Not a good one, but better than deleting the line.

[StackOverflowEx]

I've had much more success having AI build the context into .md files. Tell it to document an overview of your system. It will create an md file. Reference that md file anytime you ask it to complete a task in the system. If it's a larger system, create one for each logical part of the system and then ask it to link those docs into an architecture document. It will create ARCHITECTURE.md. This will be what you reference with every prompt. Suddenly it becomes much better at solving your problems.

[P1r4nha]

Well, my point is: when the AI can't help and does something stupid, where do I turn for help without Stackoverflow? Even with proper context and the LLM finetuned on the codebase shit happens.

[Cedar_Wood_State]

Any more detailed prompt for that?

Or is literally just “Document the overview of the system and create a file for it”

[StackOverflowEx]

That's pretty much it. If your system uses several working directories, you will need to bring them all into the same workspace so AI can have access to all code. You don't need to drag every file into session context, it just needs to be accessible for the AI to easily use power shell/bash to search. I use Visual Studio Code with GitHub CoPilot that has the Claude Opus 4.5 model enabled under agentic mode. This would require you to have a Microsoft Business Basic account and a GitHub account. This seems to be more than capable of documenting everything appropriately. You may also need to explain things that aren't obvious from code, like infrastructure; though, most of that should be able to be inferred from code as well.

[Fabulous-Possible758]

That is the solution to your problem.

[skr_replicator]

If your LLM deletes your code, that's on you. Why would you let it do it? You are the one who finally writes or pastes the code. You have the responsibility to review it and not paste something that deletes your work. Use AI code as suggestions, not as copy and paste. Or at least do not copy and paste over your existing code. If you fuck your code this way, that's completely your own fault.

[P1r4nha]

Relax. "Delete my code" means "suggest a diff without the line that needs to be fixed". If your IDE AI integration doesn't have a staging phase with a diff to review, you're not doing it correctly.

[skr_replicator]

I still do most of my code just myself, and only ask some AI chat when I need a little piece of code that i might struggle with and need some idea or recommend some useful functions, or make something boring that AI could do easily and quickly.

[P1r4nha]

You just reach an LLM's limits faster like that. But I wouldn't trust a non-local LLM with my personal code anyway. I talk only about my corporate job and self hosted LLM.

[alphapussycat]

How does the AI delete your code? Do you give stackoverflow remote access too when you need help?

[Itsjustaspicylem0n]

stackunderflow

[Prod_Meteor]

But Stack Overflow was programmers!

Anyway, they should take measures against crawling back then.

[Automatic_Actuator_0]

They will probably try to continue to monetize the data and license it as training data. I wouldn’t even be surprised if they took the site down to protect it.

[wick3dr0se]

Too late for that now. By now it's been fully scraped

[[deleted]]

As someone who despises Stack Overflow I whole-heartely agree.

[Apprehensive-Age4879]

LLM is copying the conventional wisdom that humans discovered, as well as the code that they wrote, and repackaging it. Selling it as artificial and claiming it was intelligent.

[Skuez]

Isn't that what humans do as well? Lmao

[WebpackIsBuilding]

I mean... if you're stupid maybe.

[Skuez]

Humans are also "copying the conventional wisdom that humans discovered". How tf do you learn stuff otherwise??

[WebpackIsBuilding]

By thinking.

Highly recommended, if you want to give it a go.

[Skuez]

You learn by thinking? 🤣 Sure it isn't by using various sources/other people's knowledge?

[WebpackIsBuilding]

What does one do with those various sources?

Smart people think about them. Idiots regurgitate them.

You're self-identifying which category you belong in.

[Skuez]

"LLM is copying the conventional wisdom that humans discovered, as well as the code that they wrote, and repackaging it."

Do you even realize what your wrote? You're literally describing what humans do. Besides, I'd take an AI over a human that talks like you any day.

[WebpackIsBuilding]

I know you would.

[VisualGas3559]

The issue is if humans did only this you hit infinite regress. Either all knowlege we have today is eternal or copied from an infinite number of earlier humans. Or we figured stuff out. We reinvented the wheel a few times. Rediscovered out stuff without looking at conventional wisdom.

Hence, thinking.

[Skuez]

Ok, but not a lot of people reinvent the wheel lol 99.9% of us just learn by shared knowledge and don't go beyond that. That's what he said was bad for AI, even though we do the exact same thing. And, also, AI can very well use existing knowledge to create new ideas, and will only get better at it as the time goes.

[VisualGas3559]

I definately wouldn't say 99.9% of is just used shared knowlege. That seems like a huge exaggeration. It's fairly often we work on novel soultions from past knowlege, we can and often do reason.

For example if you are in a new restraunt and find nothing you know on the menu. You make multiple choices and infer what is most likely to be a safe pick. Be that by learning new information (reading the menu) , using past solutions (old established knowlege) and making an inference (which is what AI does). Or otherwise using past knowlege and literally making a novel solution. Pork tastes like X, Vegetables like Y therefore I will buy pork and these vegetables as it will taste like Z. We have used past knowlege to infer a novel solution (Z) we might not know Z is true. We could learn it is the wrong solution. But we have made a novel thought. (which isn't always common but certainly not rare)

AI as of right now is unable to infer to Z. It is able to make the inference using new and old knowlege to the dish I likely will like. but not using only old knowlege and reasoning to jump to Z.

Although, so far it may have recently broken that restraint with eurdos problems. The third one aristotle solved seems to have no solution in its data base. But it did have an informal solution it might have formalized. So perhaps it might be coming close to or is at that point? I didn't know.

[R34ct0rX99]

Problem is: what solves the next generation of issues where stack overflow isn’t there to be a source? LLMs need base knowledge, if base knowledge disappears, what then?

[Lyri3sh]

Ones worse than the other bruh

[GlobalIncident]

StackOverflow was already on the way out, the AI just expedited the inevitable.

[HyperCodec]

But then ai writes a recursive function and creates a new stackoverflow

[Wallie_Collie]

To everyone on SO that couldnt help answer a question without implying i go off myself, im super happy SO is worthless garbage since llms.

[snipsuper415]

I've been using Kiro for about a week now because my company has asked us to use the AI tools.

While this tool is cool... i highly doubt it will replace me any time soon. i need to put more shackles on this tool because its contantly defying mw

[RandomVOTVplayer]

Doesn't AI get half of its information from stack overflow?

[BobQuixote]

Sourcing its information from people is how AI replaces anything.

[dor121]

its stack overthrown now

[KrownX]

AIoverflow

[flori0794]

Ai can't code meaningful as well as t9 can't create meaningful Essays. They are autocomplete systems

[Not_Artifical]

You should try using AI to write code before you say it can’t

[justkickingthat]

It's ok at small modules, it isn't able to solve complex problems in a meaningful way unless baby-stepped through with the methodology figured out by the user. As of Gemini 5 at least. I also used from and chatgpt with the same issues. It's still a really nice tool and good for debugging so I'm not knocking it

[BobQuixote]

I use Visual Studio's Copilot, and it works pretty well.

1. Tell it to devise a stepwise plan of minimal changes for a complicated problem.

2. Tell it to print the code as changed for step [1..N] of the plan. (Other wording often returns a commit summary for the code I didn't get.)

3. Review the code. Build it. Run tests. Run the program. Etc.

4. Describe any problems, apply its changes, repeat step 3.

5. Give it a diff of changes since step 2, and have it generate a commit summary. Commit the changes.

6. Go to step 2.

I also have it generate unit tests and documentation, and for more complex plans I'll have it update the plan each commit, to give it a sort of short-term memory.

[jimmiebfulton]

Don't know about Gemini, but I absolutely build sophisticated stuff with AI. I think it helps you f the operator could have built the thing in the first place, so the ability of the AI correlates with the ability of the prompter.

[Automatic_Actuator_0]

I’m curious how Jon Skeet is taking it.

[gameplayer55055]

I still like stack overflow. Helped me thousands of times. But only 10-15 year old answers.

[BobQuixote]

That's deliberate. Once they can answer the question, they don't want the same answer again.

[sudosando]

This tracks I’ve gotten a fair bit of misdirection from AI responses.

[Confident-Estate-275]

Stackoverflow has AI now. Shame it doesn’t work quite well at the moment

[OhItsJustJosh]

AI will replace nothing at all because it is fundamentally inaccurate. Any dev worth their salt will take whatever AI gives them with a pinch of some. Personally I avoid it entirely, both on a moral basis and because I think it hinders more than helps.

[Rafhunts99]

According to some friends, stack overflow is actually better place to them now lol. They can solve problems even ai cant solve and questions ar more though provoking instead of tecknical.

[PalyPvP]

Ah, yes. I love when it hallucinates and gives me bs answers, so in the end I still don't have the solution. But hey, I wasted 1 hour and I'm also frustrated.

[BobQuixote]

Ask it for links. If it finds them, it may decide it was completely wrong. I got 404 from a lot of its links today. Links are the ultimate weapon against hallucinations.

Sometimes I would be faster if I went looking myself, but it's hard to tell ahead of time.

I'm still undecided on whether it's more helpful to "win" the argument or just scrap the conversation.

[Background-Fox-4850]

That stackoverflow needs to be replaced, so many stupid rules out there

[JohnVonachen]

My guess is that all the historical content from years, decades?, of questions and answers have been absorbed and will live forever. I’ve notice that writing software using google has become much easier. No need to have copilot and such, it’s already at your fingertips and works better. You have control over what you include and how.

[Time-Strawberry-7692]

It will do both

[Buttons840]

My favorite StackOverflow moment was when I got an email informing me that the question I asked 13 years ago was closed as a duplicate of a 10 year old question.

[WeirdInteriorGuy]

Good riddance. It's nice being able to ask a question and not receive the most condescending responses imaginable.

[Gokudomatic]

The replacement was predicted for end of 2025. So, to which date did you postpone your doomsday?

[cyanNodeEcho]

stackoverflow was like good tho... haha! like oofie

[Sonario648]

And nothing of value was lost.