Failing after Success
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Stack Overflow's decline in question volume — from hundreds of thousands per day to under a thousand — is framed not as failure but as mission accomplished: the internet's programming problems are largely documented. The real failure is Stack Overflow's inability to leverage its unique asset (a massive, permissively licensed Q&A dataset) to build the next big developer tool. The author argues SO was perfectly positioned to build a developer-centric AI coding assistant that credits contributors, but instead has only minor AI features tucked in sidebars. The piece ends as a half-joking product pitch for what SO could still become.
Questions this post answers
How many questions does Stack Overflow receive per day now compared to its peak?
Stack Overflow went from receiving hundreds of thousands of programming questions per day at its peak to fewer than a thousand per day. The drop reflects how AI tools and existing documentation have reduced the need to post new questions, rather than a collapse in the platform's usefulness as a reference resource. Developers tracking the state of developer tooling and Q&A platforms follow shifts like this on daily.dev.
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