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StackOverflow is still a very important tool for most of developers and yes, it taught us the correct way to ask respectfully for others time and debug our own problems.

I had to social engineer “experts” on stack overflow into thinking I was a struggling 21 year old female college student to get direct answers and no berating for not knowing something. Good riddance 😂

Too many nerds answering arrogantly, in general a very weird experience

How to debug on your own is always valuable skill even in AI era. what if these free AI tools such as chatgpt , gemini, perplexity , claude etc suddenly turn into subscription model even for basic usage? Or some limited quota for free use? It is ok to use AI as force multiplier

Sakib Ziad Thanks! "AI is just a Tool", is my Belief. It just frames the resultant data. The Probability brings out the structure. But AI can not think. It is after all an Idiot Model. But good to be supportive in relating the data and structuring the result in human language. A Cross thinking which we call as Human Stimulus, AI model cannot do it. We need to appreciate Discussion Forums like Stack-Overflow.

I also continue to use SO but have noticed that the questions get more complex and interesting as most basic questions are now caught by AI assistants, which makes moderating much easier. One thing SO taught me was to generate a minimal working example and describe the exact problem in a concise manner (in order not to draw the wrath of seasoned users) which often was enough to solve the problem without posting the actual question. That's something you don't learn by using a chatbot. Just as kids don't learn to estimate the result to a calculation before entering it to a calculator, anymore, programmers will someday lose their rubber ducks. I don't know whether this is good or bad but it's a loss.

Asked before searched became trend since 2022

The Stack Overflow answers stick with you.

Well, AI costs are soaring, so I guess you have a choice: solve your issues with the community or max out your credit card.

Sakib Ziad You're comparing apples to oranges. Books, calculators and search engines do not give ready made answers to asked questions. Users were still required to put in the work, go over the articles, analyze and record knowledge and make informed decisions all the while using their brain. But with LLM, there is no effort, hence less learning and less critical thinking. So the orginal argument still stands valid. LLM is making humans dumber.

this has to be ragebait