It is impossible to ignore the correlation between the decline of Stack Overflow and the meteoric rise of AI coding assistants like ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot. While many argue that AI simply offers a more convenient way to debug code, a new narrative is emerging: developers didn’t just leave for better tech—they left because the human element had become unbearable.
For years, the platform was the gold standard for troubleshooting, but it slowly devolved into a “toxic hellhole”. Newcomers were often met with snark for asking duplicate questions, and the culture of pedantry over helpfulness made the site feel hostile rather than collaborative.
AI, for all its hallucinations, doesn’t judge you. It provides an answer without rolling its virtual eyes. The shift to LLMs isn’t just about efficiency; it is about burnout. Developers now prefer a silent, polite robot that might be wrong over a community that is technically correct but mean.
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