Before AI gave instant answers, there was Stack Overflow. It wasn’t just a tool, it was where developers learned patience. Reading threads, trying solutions, failing, and trying again. You didn’t just get answers… you learned how to think. That’s the legacy. AI makes things faster. But Stack Overflow made us better. #Developers #StackOverflow #Programming #TechJourney #LearningToCode #AI #GrowthMindset
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This year I had a heartwarming moment where copilot kept leading me astray about a bug I was trying to fix. After 15min of frustration watching my AI stray further and further from the answer. I decided I had enough and searched the web myself. I found the fix on stack overflow after a few min. I guess the AI wasn’t aware of it because it was some fringe issue that only had about 11 upvotes on stack overflow.
Im not sure I understand this point or the fear that many engineers no longer understand their code. You can brainlessly copy and paste code from Stack over flow the same way you can gen AI a solution you don’t understand. Lazy is lazy — AI just made it easier to get through the tedious parts of the task. I find myself using my engineering judgement now more than ever..
I'd go further, you'd learn to deal with stupid people: If you ask in the GPT chat: how to write "hello world" with C++? - What an intelligent question, worthy of a computer scientist. For that, use the `cout` command, which will print a text message with the words "hello world". Do you want me to help you improve by writing a program that adds two integers in C++? If you asked the same thing on Stack Overflow: - What a stupid question, go study!
Rip to the days of undergrads larping 20 years of experience just to mark questions duplicates with no further explanation.
Stack Overflow did not just answer questions. It taught developers how to ask better ones. That skill is getting rarer every day.
Don't forget, modern AI is practically fueled by a decade of Stack Overflow tears and 'nevermind, fixed it' comments
Good riddance, I really don't miss posting a question and then being down voted and basically bullied for even posting a question.
But for the old-timers, there was a world before StackOverflow (and even before Google was what it is today). I’m going to tell you the greatest story: there was something called 'Reference Manuals'—like Herbert Schildt’s C Reference Manual—and that was all you had to solve a problem. It feels both ancient and like it was just yesterday... 2004, when I started at my first company...
It's our old teacher ❤️