4 ms·

Its a nice productivity and capability boost that feels on the same magnitude as, for example, React. The "dream" of it being able to just take tickets and agen

by 827a 1y ago

Its a nice productivity and capability boost that feels on the same magnitude as, for example, React. The "dream" of it being able to just take tickets and agentically get a PR up for review is possible for ~5% of tickets. That goes up to ~10% if your organization has no standards at all, including even a self-serving standard like "at least make sure the repository remains useful to future AI usage". My organization would still hire as many software engineers as we could afford. - Stack Overflow has to be actually dead at this point. There's no reason to go there, or even Google, anymore. - Using it for exploratory high level research and summarization into unfamiliar repos is pretty nice. - Very rarely does AI write code that I feel would last a year without needing to be rewritten. That makes it good for things like knocking out a quick script or updating a button color. - None of them actually follow instructions e.g. in Cursor rules. Its a serious problem. It doesn't matter how many times or where I tell it "one component per file, one component per file", all caps, threaten its children, offer it a cookie, it just does whatever it wants.

torginus 1y ago
> Stack Overflow has to be actually dead at this point. There's no reason to go there, or even Google, anymore. I wonder if we are going to pay for that, as a society. The number of times I went there, asking some tricky question about a framework, and have the actual author or one of the core contributors answer me was astonishing.
- nicbou 1y ago
  As I wrote in a root comment, it’s decimating the traffic of informational websites. We will lose a lot of those websites that produced high-effort, simple-conclusion information. Who will bother with in-depth reviews if someone else gets the sale? Who will patiently answer questions if no one asks anymore? I think that a certain kind of craftsmanship will be lost.
  - jimbokun 1y ago
    AI companies are eating their seed corn.
    - nicbou 1y ago
      What a nice analogy!
- piva00 1y ago
  I've been using SO since it first launched, and through time it has changed a lot already. It used to be simple to ask questions and get answers, when it grew and the huge influx of questions required moderation it was a nice smooth change but over time the pearl clutching of mods to mark many reasonable questions as irrelevant started to grip the usefulness. I used to answer a lot of the basic questions just to help others as I've felt I had been helped, the moderation shift applying more and more rules started to make me feel unwelcomed to ask questions and even to answer. I do understand why it happened, with the influx of people trying to game the platform to show off in their resumés they were at the "top" of whatever buzzword was hot in the industry at the time but it still affected me as a contributing user out of kindness. By 2018 I would not even login to vote or add comments, and I feel it was already going on a slow downhill path, and LLMs will definitely kill it. We will definitely suffer, SO has been an incredible resource to figure out things not covered well in documentation, I remember when proper experts (i.e. maintainers of libraries/frameworks) would jump in to answer about a weird edge case, or clarify the usage of a feature, explain why it was misuse, etc. Right now I don't see anything else that will provide this knowledge to LLMs, in 10-20 years time there will be a lot missing in training datasets, and it will be a slow degradation of knowledge available in the open for us all to learn from.
  - torginus 1y ago
    Yeah, SO had many problems, I'd argue most stemming from the points system that: - Made people treat it like a contest and tried to game it - Obscure, difficult questions, with obscure, difficult answers barely being valued, while 'How do I make a GET request in node' going gangbusters.
    - kldg 1y ago
      as an aside, the ranking/rating systems are largely why I quit using social media a long time ago and stick to a small chatroom of people I know. it's relatively tolerable here where scores aren't next to posts (and the user base generally tolerant, lets whoever say their piece and move on), but I use following ublock filter to hide the score stuff: news.ycombinator.com###karma news.ycombinator.com##.score news.ycombinator.com##td:has-text(/^karma:$/):upward(tr) I've thought about removing the graying feature and maybe doing a random sort of replies, but haven't accumulated enough spite yet.
- jimbokun 1y ago
  We are losing the next generation of content to train future AIs on.
- red-iron-pine 1y ago
  AI has to draw it's answers from somewhere. if they're not in stack overflow they have to be in reddit, or a discord channel, or something. or else the AI has to be able to discern answers from first principles themselves, which most LLMs can't -- they're language model.
scubadude 1y ago
> Stack Overflow has to be actually dead at this point. There's no reason to go there, or even Google, anymore. If, like the meme, you just copied from SO without using your brain then yes AI is comparable. If you appreciate SO for the discussion (peer review) about the answers and contrasting approaches sometimes out of left field, well good luck because AI can't and won't give you that.
- jansan 1y ago
  There is some very deep knowledge in SO's comments and some lower rated replies. But I suspect that is not what was making Stackoverflow so popular.
  - polotics 1y ago
    I suspect the new Stack Overflow is Discord channels, at least for some platforms/frameworks. Too bad the free-form non-threaded discussion format of Discord makes things so hard to follow.
    - jansan 1y ago
      If a company uses discord for support, then I am not using their product, unless it is a computer game. It is that simple.
- AndrewDucker 1y ago
  Yes, very much this. I liked having 5 different approaches, and discussions of which one works best, rather than having an AI select one to use.
- jimbokun 1y ago
  The give and take of contrasting views is certainly lost by LLMs, which create the illusion of a consensus answer to any question.
  - nerfellicat 1y ago

by 827a 1y ago

torginus 1y ago

> Stack Overflow has to be actually dead at this point. There's no reason to go there, or even Google, anymore. I wonder if we are going to pay for that, as a society. The number of times I went there, asking some tricky question about a framework, and have the actual author or one of the core contributors answer me was astonishing.

nicbou 1y ago
As I wrote in a root comment, it’s decimating the traffic of informational websites. We will lose a lot of those websites that produced high-effort, simple-conclusion information. Who will bother with in-depth reviews if someone else gets the sale? Who will patiently answer questions if no one asks anymore? I think that a certain kind of craftsmanship will be lost.
- jimbokun 1y ago
  AI companies are eating their seed corn.
  - nicbou 1y ago
    What a nice analogy!
piva00 1y ago
I've been using SO since it first launched, and through time it has changed a lot already. It used to be simple to ask questions and get answers, when it grew and the huge influx of questions required moderation it was a nice smooth change but over time the pearl clutching of mods to mark many reasonable questions as irrelevant started to grip the usefulness. I used to answer a lot of the basic questions just to help others as I've felt I had been helped, the moderation shift applying more and more rules started to make me feel unwelcomed to ask questions and even to answer. I do understand why it happened, with the influx of people trying to game the platform to show off in their resumés they were at the "top" of whatever buzzword was hot in the industry at the time but it still affected me as a contributing user out of kindness. By 2018 I would not even login to vote or add comments, and I feel it was already going on a slow downhill path, and LLMs will definitely kill it. We will definitely suffer, SO has been an incredible resource to figure out things not covered well in documentation, I remember when proper experts (i.e. maintainers of libraries/frameworks) would jump in to answer about a weird edge case, or clarify the usage of a feature, explain why it was misuse, etc. Right now I don't see anything else that will provide this knowledge to LLMs, in 10-20 years time there will be a lot missing in training datasets, and it will be a slow degradation of knowledge available in the open for us all to learn from.
- torginus 1y ago
  Yeah, SO had many problems, I'd argue most stemming from the points system that: - Made people treat it like a contest and tried to game it - Obscure, difficult questions, with obscure, difficult answers barely being valued, while 'How do I make a GET request in node' going gangbusters.
  - kldg 1y ago
    as an aside, the ranking/rating systems are largely why I quit using social media a long time ago and stick to a small chatroom of people I know. it's relatively tolerable here where scores aren't next to posts (and the user base generally tolerant, lets whoever say their piece and move on), but I use following ublock filter to hide the score stuff: news.ycombinator.com###karma news.ycombinator.com##.score news.ycombinator.com##td:has-text(/^karma:$/):upward(tr) I've thought about removing the graying feature and maybe doing a random sort of replies, but haven't accumulated enough spite yet.
jimbokun 1y ago
We are losing the next generation of content to train future AIs on.
red-iron-pine 1y ago
AI has to draw it's answers from somewhere. if they're not in stack overflow they have to be in reddit, or a discord channel, or something. or else the AI has to be able to discern answers from first principles themselves, which most LLMs can't -- they're language model.

scubadude 1y ago

> Stack Overflow has to be actually dead at this point. There's no reason to go there, or even Google, anymore. If, like the meme, you just copied from SO without using your brain then yes AI is comparable. If you appreciate SO for the discussion (peer review) about the answers and contrasting approaches sometimes out of left field, well good luck because AI can't and won't give you that.

jansan 1y ago
There is some very deep knowledge in SO's comments and some lower rated replies. But I suspect that is not what was making Stackoverflow so popular.
- polotics 1y ago
  I suspect the new Stack Overflow is Discord channels, at least for some platforms/frameworks. Too bad the free-form non-threaded discussion format of Discord makes things so hard to follow.
  - jansan 1y ago
    If a company uses discord for support, then I am not using their product, unless it is a computer game. It is that simple.
AndrewDucker 1y ago
Yes, very much this. I liked having 5 different approaches, and discussions of which one works best, rather than having an AI select one to use.
jimbokun 1y ago
The give and take of contrasting views is certainly lost by LLMs, which create the illusion of a consensus answer to any question.
- nerfellicat 1y ago