Stack Overflow's Decline: The ChatGPT Impact and Uncertain Future
2025-01-08
A GitHub data analysis reveals a staggering 70.7% drop in new questions on Stack Overflow from March 2023 to December 2024, plummeting from 87,105 to 25,566. This correlates strongly with the rise of ChatGPT; since its launch, Stack Overflow has seen nearly 83,000 fewer questions. The author, a top Stack Overflow contributor, describes their own experience of having well-formatted questions quickly closed, highlighting a potential key factor in the platform's decline. The drastic decrease in question volume suggests a concerning trajectory, mirroring levels seen in 2009 shortly after launch, hinting at a potential lifespan of less than a year.
Development
Platform Decline