StackOverflow is Dying (and I'm Not Sure How to Feel About It)

StackOverflow just returned to month-one activity levels. December 2025 had 3,862 questions asked. Their first full month back in 2008? 3,749 questions. It's literally gone full circle back to the start.

And like... fuck, bro. I have mixed feelings about this.

The Toxic Hellhole We All Loved to Hate

Let me explain something first - StackOverflow was always kind of a shitshow. If you've ever posted a question there, you know exactly what I'm talking about. You'd ask something genuine, trying to solve an actual problem, and some fuckass with 50k reputation would immediately mark it as duplicate, link to some tangentially related post from 2012 that doesn't even answer your question, and close the thread.

The moderation was peak dev Karen energy. Give people a tiny bit of power and they'll power trip so hard. It's like they got off on gatekeeping knowledge from newbies. "This question has been asked before" - bro, I searched for 20 minutes and found nothing. "Use the search function" - I DID, YOUR SHITTY SEARCH DOESN'T WORK.

PrimeTime called it perfectly in his video:

"Stack Overflow was a toxic, horrible place designed to make dev Karens excel."

And he's right. The graph shows the platform was already dying BEFORE AI even became a thing. That COVID spike? Gone in 2 months. People hated the site long before ChatGPT existed.

But Here's the Thing...

I started learning web development back in 2020. ChatGPT wasn't even a thing yet (that dropped November 2022). And back then? StackOverflow was basically THE place to learn. I'd hit a problem with some CSS bullshit or JavaScript wasn't doing what I expected, and boom - someone on StackOverflow had asked the exact same thing 6 years ago and got a perfect answer.

It genuinely helped me. I can't even count how many times I copy-pasted code from StackOverflow just to understand how something worked, then rewrote it myself once I got it. That platform taught me a fuck ton about web dev.

So when I see that graph declining, there's this weird nostalgia hit. Like watching something that was part of your learning journey just... die.

When AI Took Over

Around 2024, I basically stopped using StackOverflow. Not intentionally - it just happened. I started using Claude and v0.dev more, and suddenly I didn't need StackOverflow anymore.

Here's why AI won:

Speed - Why wait for some asshole to mark your question as duplicate when Claude can give you a working solution in 30 seconds?

No judgment - AI doesn't give a shit if your question is "basic" or "been asked before." It just helps.

Context - You can have a whole conversation. "No wait, that didn't work because X" - try this instead. StackOverflow was one-and-done.

Beginner friendly - Let's be real, StackOverflow's layout is confusing as fuck for newbies. The voting system, the reputation requirements, the rules about what you can and can't ask... it's designed to keep people out.

But AI isn't perfect either. Sometimes it hallucinates functions that don't exist. Sometimes it gives you technically correct but dogshit code. And honestly? The verified answers on StackOverflow were solid because they'd been tested by thousands of devs.

The Missed Opportunity

This is the insane part that Prime pointed out - StackOverflow was PERFECTLY positioned for the AI boom. They had millions of high-quality programming Q&As. They could've built the best coding AI assistant in the world with their own data.

Instead? They collapsed. Anthropic and OpenAI trained on their data (probably), made better products, and now StackOverflow is back to month-one numbers.

"A company so thoroughly positioned to benefit off the boom of AI completely collapses under the weight of a Karen." - Prime

That's fucking crazy when you think about it. They had everything. The data, the community, the brand recognition. And they fumbled it so hard.

Is This Actually Bad?

I don't think so? Like yeah, it's sad to see something that helped so many developers just die. But honestly, good riddance to that toxic moderation culture.

The newbies today have it better. They can ask Claude or ChatGPT dumb questions without getting flamed. They can learn at their own pace without worrying about reputation scores or whether their question is "Stack Overflow worthy."

I still search my problems online first because I'm trying not to use AI for every little thing. Sometimes it leads me to StackOverflow, sometimes to random docs, sometimes to Reddit. But it's not my first choice anymore.

StackOverflow added that "AI Assist" function recently, which is kinda funny. Like they knew they were dying and tried to adapt. But by then, everyone already preferred asking other AIs directly.

The Bittersweet Reality

When I look at that graph, I feel the same way Prime does - it's bittersweet. Part of me is genuinely happy that developers don't have to deal with that toxic shit anymore. Part of me is sad because StackOverflow was there when I needed it most.

It's like watching something from your learning journey get cancelled. You're happy it's gone because it sucked, but also sad because it was part of your journey, you know?

We have to move on. Technology moves fast, and StackOverflow couldn't keep up - not because of AI, but because they created an environment where helping people became secondary to enforcing rules and protecting egos.

The future is AI-assisted development. And honestly? That's probably better for everyone learning to code today.

RIP StackOverflow. Thanks for the copy-paste solutions. Sorry about the toxic moderators.