Ask HN: How long has it been since you last opened Stack Overflow?
As Claude Code, Codex, and other AI coding agents take up more and more of our daily work, I've noticed that I now spend most of my time writing specs, nailing down requirements, and talking to the agent, rather than actually poring over the details of the code.
Today, for some totally random reason, it suddenly hit me that I haven't opened Stack Overflow in a very, very long time, at least half a year. And that gives me a strange sense of loss. I used to open it almost every single day. It was there through more than a decade of my career, and somehow I managed to forget about it this fast.
So guys, for how long have you not opened Stack Overflow? And has anything else quietly dropped out of your workflow the same way, without you even noticing? I haven't looked at it in over a year. I haven't bothered trying to ask a question in 10 years. They were killing themselves before AI by being openly hostile to people asking questions. Clicked a search result that went there probably last week. I might have an account there, but I've never asked nor answered a questioned, nor voted. I keep checking on profile if there is any activity. Other than that I haven't used SO for long time. It does not even come up in the google search results. Taking to LLMs like gemini, chatgpt etc does solve the technical problems. Nowadays, I’m mostly interacting with open source components, so I read source code when the docs are lacking. I rarely have questions in the form of “How do I do…”. They are mostly “How does this thing work?” Probably a week or two ago, since I clicked on a Google result that led there. Don't think I've ever specifically seeked out Stack Overflow though, especially not in the last five years. A few years, and that was on accident. They were too degraded to be worth using 5 years ago compared to the hey day I've used it a couple of days ago, though I did not find a useful answer for my problem there I ask Brave for any error and it gives an AI answer with code on how to fix it. AI is my new SO I started using LLMs in 2022, quickly turned away because the things obivously made up stuff I am a certified expert it. Back to Stack Overflow. Came around to LLMs in late 2025 again as they rolled it out in my workplace and quickly succumbed to them becoming my all-knowing, (almost) flawless, infinitely patient teacher - that was the last time I opened Stack Overflow.
AI never tells me I'm dumb for asking a question, never passive-aggressively shoves genuine questions aside. And AI can just be as critical in dissecting my flawed approaches to problems as SO could be (which is good!) but without the toxicity. stack what? Yesterday. almost one year ago