The number of questions on Stack Overflow fell by 78 percent in December 2025 compared to a year earlier. Developers are switching en masse to AI tools in
When it was just SO I think… if my memory serves. When it was small enough that only a (relative) few programmers were using it and generally behaving well.
It’s 17 years old, so probably only in the first 2 or 3 years. 2010 is when it got VC funding and is probably when it started to got to crap.
LLM’s won’t be helping but SE/SO have been fully enshitifying themselves for years.
It was amazing in the early days.
It was a vast improvement over expert sex change, which was the king before SO.
expertSEXchange dot com hahahahaahahahahahahahaha oh that brought me some dreadful memories! Thanks for the laugh and rhe chills
That and the url for Pen Is Mightier (penismightier.com) are my favorite examples of poor url choice in the early days of the internet.
How early though? I stopped using them about 12 years ago due to the toxic environment.
When it was just SO I think… if my memory serves. When it was small enough that only a (relative) few programmers were using it and generally behaving well.
It’s 17 years old, so probably only in the first 2 or 3 years. 2010 is when it got VC funding and is probably when it started to got to crap.