After seeing this graph about the fall of StackOverflow, it’s clear to me that I’m not the only one who has stopped using it in favor of LLMS (large language model) alternatives. With the rise of generative AI-powered initiatives like OverflowAI by Stack Overflow, and the potential of ChatGPT by OpenAI, the landscape of programming knowledge sharing is evolving. These AI models have the ability to generate human-like text and provide answers to programming questions. It’s fascinating to witness the potential of AI as a game-changing tool in programming problem solving. So, I’m curious, which AI have you replaced StackOverflow with? Share your favorite LLMS or generative AI platform for programming in the comments below!
Initially I was very impressed by ChatGPT but over the past few weeks I’m getting fed up with it. It completely ignores constraints I give it regarding library versions I use. It dreams up insane, and garbage, answers to fairly simple prompts. For more complicated stuff it’s even worse.
My current workflow is, try top few google results, if failed try ChatGPT for a few minutes, if failed go to documentation and or crawl through SO for some time, if failed ask on SO.
I tested some of the questions I asked on stackoverflow vs ChatGPT and the answers on stack overflow were much better. So for real “I really am stuck here” sort of issues I use SO.
Out of curiosity, do you use ChatGPT Plus? I’ve found that GPT-4 is worlds better at solving programming problems and is much less likely to hallucinate (as long as the question isn’t too obscure).