Stack Overflow stopped caring about developers a long time ago

Hey everyone. Sorry for the editing issues with this video and me appearing twice sometimes. I’m not sure what happened but it seemed to just not render properly. 🫠 unlike stack overflow, I will do better next time and make you all happy! Thanks for watching

StackOverflow on job interview: -Why do you want to work for us? Candidate: -What a dumb question to ask! StackOverflow: -You are hired!!!

Nothing drove me nuts more than finding a post with the exact same question I had only to see one comment "why would you even want to do this," adding zero value to the post.

It's been terrible for years. The admins are pedantic narcissists.

Stack Overflow will make money from their deal with OpenAI, but it seems like that might be the last money they ever make.

The top answers that you are referred to if you search on a search engine, are more often than not closed as a duplicate. If you then go to the question that SO refers to as the master question, it is often only vaguely related, and has a lower quality in the answers, and even of the questions itself.

Once I asked a question there, some high rep dude came with this not here for doing your homework attitude, then some time later I answered my own question that I figured out how to solve the issue, then the guy edited my question and said that my own solution did not answer the question. And he was rigth, since he modified my own question the way that the answer no longer covered it. Cool huh?

I got scolded for not having the latest version of the R programming language even though the question was valid regardless of the version. The person didn't stop and went on with the rant about the evil of not using the latest version. My company had a licensed version that was always some versions behind and he refused to understand or acknowledge that. It was water off a duck's back for me but for many new developers the hostility is intimidating.

from the newbie's point of view it used to give the impression of an exclusive club, an elitist group with a purity culture.

They are a step away from being forgotten. Nobody likes being treated like a noob for asking a question. They are rude, impolite, and absurd. AI is just the last nail in the coffin.

My favourite gripe is the inability to change the “correct” answer. Often the answer is ambiguous or wrong and it often stays as “correct”

The reputation system works against people who generally stfu but have expertise in a few topics.

StackOverflow lost me when the moderators started power tripping … no thanks …

There is nothing more discouraging than asking a question and being made to feel like an idiot by someone you hoped could help you out! This is one of the major problems with SO. This is why it is used as a last resort. I even went so far as to avoid asking questions and would just try to do searches for similar questions with hopefully accurate answers.

Unfortunately, all of these problems have been apparent for years, as shown in the video, and they still haven't invested anything into solving them, so I don't see them solving their actual issues. Instead, they've invested all their time into growth tactics that make no sense because these tactics are only growth tactics, not stuff that has to do with the user's experience and what they perceive as valuable. Gamifying the experience is only a growth tactic when it doesn't improve anything and it's just there for user retention. This is a huge reason as to why most gacha games don't last more than 2 years. Gacha games are literally developed with user retention in their core and that's why they all shutdown so fast as they have no base to expand on for the unachievable user retention rates these companies aim for based on no true unbiased data and stats

Consistently going against the core userbase's interests has killed quite a few platforms over the years. And it will kill StackExchange, if they continue going this way.

A few years ago I saw a question on SO about piece of Linux interface that I’ve written. I’ve created an account just to answer it. As an author of the interface I could provide all the necessary details. My efforts were rewarded by being downvoted by people who had no idea what they were talking about. I’ve closed my account soon after and never been tempted to contribute to SO ever again.

Another issue i have noticed recently with SO is people editing your question purely for a bit of rep, like they will edit it in such a way that it doesn't improve the question in any way, they just found a way to re-word it so they can say they edited it, or they edit it so much it actually changes the question. I had this recently and when i reversed the edit, i suddenly got a downvote (I'm assuming from the user that edited my question, he then edited it again, which i again reversed, then i got an email from a mod saying Im not allowed to undo edits, despite this mods edits making no sense. So after 30 mins fighting a mod I deleted the question. I have used the site for 10+ years and have circa 10k rep, Im not a new user I know how the site works, its just frustrating when people try to just piggy back on your question to get some rep for doing nothing of value.

I used to use SO all the time, but would never dare ask a new question. Now I’m using Gemini Advanced, and I love the writing tone of the good information (and code).

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