Abstract:
The number of visits to Stack Overflow, the world's largest programming Q&A website, has continued to decline after the introduction of AI tools. More and more developers are asking questions and finding solutions through AI. This has led to a continued decline in the number of active users on Stack Overflow and a sharp drop in the number of user questions.
Looking at the statistics is really shocking:
March 2014: 207,100 questions asked in the month
June 2020: 171,800 questions asked in the month
November 2022: 109,100 questions asked in the month
October 2023: 52,300 questions asked in the month
October 2024: 23,100 questions asked in the month
October 2025: 0.52 million questions asked in the month
September 2026: 961 questions asked in the month
OpenAI ChatGPT was officially launched at the end of November 2022. At that time, Stack Overflow still had about 100,000 average monthly questions. One year later, in October 2023, the average monthly number of questions plummeted by 50%. In the past year, in addition to ChatGPT, various AI chatbots have sprung up.
Then there are various programming agents based on artificial intelligence. Developers only need to put forward requirements, and the rest of the architecture design, code generation, debugging, and repair problems are all completed by the agents themselves. Therefore, many developers no longer need to ask questions or seek existing solutions on Stack Overflow.
Public knowledge bases are under pressure to update:
Stack Overflow has accumulated a large number of public questions and answers over the years, and developers can search to find historical questions, community edits, and solutions proposed by different users. AI agents change the way these answers are obtained and also change the path by which new experiences are propagated.
Developers can now solve questions in private AI conversations, but the resolution process will not appear on the Internet for others to search, discuss, and revise like public answers. For programming languages, frameworks, and development tools with frequent version updates, it is still important to continue to add new questions and answers.
Source:
LLM Blogs
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