January 7, 2026
From upvotes to uproar
We might have been slower to abandon StackOverflow if it wasn't a toxic hellhole
Devs flee to AI, say SO was mean; old guard blames homework and waves t-shirts
TLDR: Stack Overflow use is plunging as developers flock to faster, friendlier AI tools. Commenters clash over whether toxic culture pushed people away, if AI risks starving itself of training data, and whether Stack Overflow still matters thanks to Google traffic and veteran defenders.
Stack Overflow, once the internet’s help desk for coders, is getting roasted for its vibe while a viral chart shows questions sliding for years and then falling off a cliff. The community says the quiet part loud: AI tools give answers fast and, crucially, aren’t rude. One Redditor didn’t hold back, saying they can get a response from a large language model (LLM—think ChatGPT) in under a minute instead of waiting days for a “toxic and potentially useless” reply. Ouch.
Then came the plot twists. MattGaiser was stunned that Stack Overflow actually peaked back in 2014, not during the recent AI boom. gnabgib dropped a mega-thread link with 1,000+ comments on Hacker News, and the debate blew up: pinus-cembra worries AI is self-cannibalizing—if Q&A sites die, what do future AI models learn from?
Meanwhile, the old guard showed up. Former front-page contributor zabzonk says it wasn’t that bad, blaming a flood of lazy homework questions—and yes, there were perks: “free t-shirt!” CommonGuy adds that Stack Overflow wanted fewer low-effort posts and still gets tons of Google traffic. The memes write themselves: “Robots don’t downvote,” “T-shirt vs. toxic takes,” and “Brace-for-impact era is over.” It’s speed and civility vs. tradition and data, and the comments are pure popcorn.
Key Points
- •The article claims Stack Overflow had a long-standing reputation for being unwelcoming to question askers.
- •It references Stack Overflow’s 2018 blog post acknowledging community issues and intent to improve.
- •A widely shared graph is described as showing a steady decline in Stack Overflow questions from about 2017 to 2023, followed by a sharp drop afterward.
- •The author cites a Reddit comment suggesting developers now prefer faster answers from LLMs, even if those answers need verification.
- •The article argues that a more welcoming community might have slowed the shift away, offering a lesson for sustaining online communities.