The AIs are built off of unique, quality content but what happens when there is no incentive to produce said content in the first place?

I work on embedded software c/c++ stuff, device-tree code and drivers etc. That side of stackoverflow has always been really chill and useful for me, as opposed to the norm

So true Prime, getting good at debugging is a hard and bloody road without shortcuts. One has to just walk it yourself and learn by doing it imo. This is also how I trained my friend and ex-coworker on our job, instead of just giving him the answers, I taught him where to start and how to proceed. Ofc I interpreted sometimes cryptic error messages for him but only went so far as to give him tips on how he can get himself to the goal. No point in giving ppl the answers only, thats how they stay dumb and get lazy.

Learned helplessness is why in our math classes we didn't start with calculators (much less computers) until you have the arithmetic down. You have to learn it before you automate it, or you build in your inherent problem-spotting ceiling. It's also why we should also sometimes have open-book tests, we should have to figure out things that we haven't just memorized the terms or formulas for. Just like any human language, you really learn by being immersed and having to use it to survive. The number of times I just need a minute to look at something and can point out that it doesn't make sense on its face when others can't find the problem is astounding to me already.

That "learned helplessness" rant is exactly why I'm against using these AI tools in classes. But that's exactly how people will use it. So many people in my CS courses jumped to these AIs and have no idea how to even use the language they're programming in. They even gloat about the fact that they can get by without doing work. RTFM! Experiment! Please! AI is not a replacement for knowing what the code does. It's a general-purpose snippet engine.

I definitely agree about how AI affects DX. If you know how to code already, it will make coding way easier, but if you don't, it will almost make it harder to learn by making it easier t code without learning

The most infuriating thing for me about Stack Overflow is how you can’t answer questions without enough reputation. I usually try to figure out stuff myself by reading documentation or experimenting, so if I end up on stack overflow it’s usually something obscure. There will usually be someone asking the question but there will be crappy non-answers. Eventually I solve the problem and I want to update the SO thread *with a working answer* but I literally can’t. Because I haven’t asked enough questions?!

Remember having such a hard time learning how to do batch scripts. Many tutorials I've read fail to explain or cover certain syntax, so whenever I go to Stack Overflow they'd provide solutions that almost look like magic runes. Here, the problem I see people have about AI giving the easy solution could be also seen in Stack Overflow. They don't explain jack shit. Why it's a good solution, why it works, why it does the job better than others-while I'm losing my mind wondering how the fuck I recursively search my directories to rename my files. Because my prideful ass thought it would be more rewarding to learn how to write my own scripts instead of using a free software to do the job for me.

Oh no! now all the arrogant software engineers will have to circlejerk on Reddit instead! Atleast we will have them all in one place now.

yeah I like the analogy of a nail gun vs a hammer. A person with a nail gun with no framing experience still needs to learn how walls are framed. He might never do more than an "ok" job if he thinks his job is to use the tool. But give a person who's framed walls before a nailgun and they'll go ridiculously fast with no time at all.

6:00 totally agree, once you are really experienced with a toolchain it’s amazing the intuition you can get into debugging. The most subtle cryptic errors and you can follow your gut into the solution on what once would have taken you days. I feel like you can lean into that same thing for LLMs too. It’s like mind reading code on to the screen

The problem with " knowing, what you are doing" is, that with how fast things move, that knowledge will slowly become less and less relevant. So if we are not careful it could become easy for something like Copilot to slip in and close these knowledge gaps, without us noticing, that it happens. Thus making us more dependent on it. A little bit like Auto correction on phones. Yes, we complain when it does something wrong, but we realize only how much else it does, once we turn it off.

I also really want a standard interface for docs in my editor. Kinda like LSP. But DSP lol.

The outros just keep getting better.

Hands down best sign off line (except for css on the backend)

8:42 Compilers: "sweats nervously"

I would say that debugging at that level is not only seniority but knowledge of the system. You start cold on something no matter how senior, it'll take its time

Maybe we've just solved programming, there are no more questions

What if Stack Overflow sues Open AI and others for using their data without permission?

Fanciest autocomplete: $0 valuation Same software rebranded as AI: [ _Dr Evil impression_ ] $1 billion Seeing reaction of realization that they're the same software: priceless

now you just want to make sure you are in giga chad echelon

It was a long ride for them. I'm sure their plan for the next ship is already in execution.

But wouldnt ai just read the mass amount of code

RE: learned helplessness LLM tooling is just a continuation of a general trend that things that make life easier for experienced professional software developers make it harder to become one in the first place. Garbage collection ("who cares about allocations? Heap profiler? What's that do?"). Higher level languages ("L2 cache miss? Registers? What're those?"). IDE refactoring tools ("why do I need to know how to organize my logic? The IDE has menu options for that"). LLM code generators ("why do I need to learn how this actually works? The code writes itself").

I agree 100% about more jobs being created thanks to AI and all.

That's one hell of a name

"would you look at tha'at?" 😂

Honestly, not surprised. Each time I try to post a question I only get hostile unhelpful comments, then my post gets doomvoted to hell. I prefer talking to a bot thanks.

Ive refused to pay for copilot- Is it really worth it?

At least according to chatgpt, 7% of finland's population work in IT, as opposed to 3.3% in US. AFAIK it's fairly difficult to get a job regardless of LLMs being available or not.

Bro, that was when chat gpt launched, copilot was around some time already

He’s talking about windows copilot?

You should accept that AI building UI sponsorship, that sounds interesting

I’m not sure how long the LLMs dominance will last. I can easily spot LLM responses. But while I find that for basic questions LLM is my “go-to”, I am much more drawn to community discussion around design concepts, architecture, and thought process. I don’t think LLM can replace that.

With all the safety features in these AI tools, where do now go if I want to be yelled at? 😢

one of the risks of ai is that over-reliance may eventually enfeeble us

Is it not worth noting that there's no limit to the amount of code that can be written, so its not like AI takes 100% of written code, and we won't get up to AI only code for a long time yet. So for now, the more code written is a net positive.

So well summed up. literally "mic-drop" kind of a video

Prime's chat is wild. It ranges from super smart people with helpful contributions to basically shit posters. (Shit commenters?) I especially love the people that spam completely unrelated questions over and over (and over) again. Like the guy in this video that asked Prime for help debugging his packer error in his nvim config for the entire 15+ minute video. Does that guy really think Prime will just completely drop his current train of thought and interrupt the discussion of the article he just read and walk him through/fix his issue for him. The cherry on top in this case is dude is on Windows, an OS Prime isn't even using... I bet the guy could have fixed his own problem with the tiniest bit of ddg-foo. Wouldn't even need to ask on SO or use chat jippity. Packer/nvim are fairly well documented and/or questions answered if you took 3 seconds to look in the right place. Another video, dude asked for Prime to send a link to info, again on a completely unrelated topic, while Prime was actively fully engaged in the topic at hand. Prime said No and dude replied "Fuck you" Wow... People are so self entitled and self important it's mind boggling. To bring this comment back around to be on topic, I bet Windows nvim\packer guy would have much better luck getting an answer to his question from chat jippity than asking on SO or Prime lol Or as I said above, a simple search engine query... As for the rude "stop what you are doing and look for the answer to my question for me" guy, I hope he never finds the link or info he's looking for, be it via SO or chat jippity 😅

Since I won’t have StackOverflow for long, please put me down in response to this comment. I need my daily dose of being insulted.

Copilot may have been a big factor, but there were also the mass layoffs across the industry that probably shocked the heck out of people learning to code and realizing they needed to get off stack overflow and go back to their real job because those 400k stock options they kept hearing about weren't happening.

You don't have to see the Google search trends, the layoffs are evidence enough.

I have a gold badge on Stack overflow, and I'm not particularly concerned. I cared a little about my rank, but not a lot.

I browse SO as anon and I actually quite like it. I could see why people who actually engage with it would be dissuaded by it tho

GIGO,...Generative AI is still only as good as the quality of its input which right now actually seems to be causing averaging down rather than improving quality in many situations. It's good at breadth, across huge amounts of information and maybe finding connections that large data can surface that a single human brain can't compute. It's not just debugging that suffers, but when making connections and innovation, the right person in the right place at the right time is still the lightning in a bottle. And the less experience engineers have day-to-day, hands on, will make that innovation harder to come by. AI is suited for finding an "answer" when there is one in the pile somewhere, but not for figuring out if we are even asking the right question (at least for now).

Stackoverflow didnt innovate or try to. Website hasnt seemed to change since I was a teenager. I feel likes its pretty obvious it was going to go downhill especially with moderator abuse

Copilot released Oct-2021 (source Wikipedia), “The Dip” is Apr-2022. 6 months delay seems a reasonably different event, but I haven’t factored in the rate of adoption.

neovim 0.10 beta has gotten released, yay

StackOverflow does not assimilate my queries into its Borg-like Black Box (space doom cube, whatever)

"Never needed SO again..." Eh... the LLMs need to get their training data from somewhere. Maybe you personally but someone needs that source data.

@ThePrimeTime StackOverflow just announced major changes at WeAreDevelopers, overflowAI, IDE plugin and more. I guess they trying, no more closed for duplicate

Hey! Making me fat and useless is my job! AI is stealing my Job!

I know what you mean. Your arguments give me the wish to try Copilot.

ChatGPT crawling bots are gone so the traffic is back to normal

I have really good debugging skills. I sometimes suprise myself, but I have 0 knowledge. I am a mechanical engineer in software development. I am preparing for doing higher studies in CSE so I can overcome the gap. I Haven't touched AI cause i don't see the purpose when learning, i am basically stuck in tutorial hell.

The Stack no longer has overflow

Ngl, I’m getting a little bit of guilty pleasure out of watching S/O collapse. Can’t count on 10 hands and 10 feet how many times I’ve asked questions just to have some rude 40 y/o with a 13 y/o’s people skills leave some condescending, snarky remark. If I wasn’t desperate to use S/O for answers, I would’ve stopped using it a loooong time ago. Now I can get direct answers to questions minus the snark. I’m all set.

I think Stack Overflow would be a great tool even today if it was serving modern answers. But it's so pathetic when you open a good question and most of the upvoted answers are from 2010, and it takes 15 minutes to finally find the current best practice way down, probably with only a few upvotes. Most people, after they get some experience, are specifically looking for the best solution for the current version and culture, not just for any solution.

Its interesting to see that 90% of stackoverflow visits are for JavaScript noob questions.

14:40 "more jobs will become available" -- just not at stackoverflow.

I want to use AI code tools, but the ethical concerns on the licensing of the training data used is iffy with me. Also, I'd rather not have my company code be used for training their models, for their money. No thanks.

Stack overflow just became a cess pool of gate keepers, closing down perfectly valid questions as duplicates, failing to realise the "existing" answer was no longer correct. I understand some languages may stay mostly the same over a decade, but the world of front end moves quickly so linking to a react snippet from 3 years ago is just not helping anyone. I stopped using stack overflow because of this (for front-end at least), and is possibly helped grow a lot of KZfaq devs in the process

Hey Prime, could you make a video of how you make use of copilot to boost productivity? Have you measured your gains in term how fast you can finish something and in what percentage Copilot helped you?

In terms of jobs and the future I think we will be building more complex software. All those high level languages, frameworks or even game engines didn't lead to fewer applications, games etc. But they got way bigger and reached more people, industries etc. I guess that will happen with AI too.

If you don't even have the concept in mind, you won't know the question to be asking, and that's why ai-coding is disastrous.

nah, it's 100% upvote/downvote buttons redesign impact

here comes Back in my day boomer moment .. i can finally be boomer

You say copilot will leave us fat and useless... What if im already fat and useless? Also I like to be spoonfeed I dont see the problem there

ai tools helps with basic snippets even better than stackoverflow

"Go through each concept one by one..." Cool but we both know that you aren't going to do that.

I hate interacting with ChatGPT... something about how it writes just rubs me the wrong way. It's really irritating and pretentious

Sorry, this video is not on topic so I am going to go ahead and close the comments section. edit: learn first to do a video on topic: ... read our faq on how to do a video on topic: .... you will not be able to post another video on topic because you need to wait 1 day to actually learn how to do a video on topic. and if you use gpt we will know and ban you. /lmao

I thing getting the answers being spoonfed to you is one of the worst way to learn. There's no way you'll get any deep understanding about a subject if all you do is ask "how do I do X" and you get your little shitty X dropped on your laps. The big risk it's when presented with a problem the first thing those people will do is ask chat gibbity instead of using their brain and their experience.

I kinda feel stackoverflow is overrated. I have always found github issues to be way more useful than stackoverflow. Hell even reddit feels better these days

I don't like that AI devs get so much power, without us really understanding what they are doing. I do not use any AI tool.

What AI is going to do is make the bar for programming so much lower than it already is, and when there's a high supply of devs who can "get the job done", eventually sky high salaries of devs will come down

unpopular opinion, but SO at least forces people to create an isolated reproducible of their issue in order to ask for help. this actually trains people on how to look at the problem in a different light and most of the time they end up solving it themselves through doing it. copilot is just autocomplete, it doesn’t teach you anything

wow just like capitalism

How come, if I made a tool yhat just scrapes the web for answers and auto-fills snippets from stackoverflow, I would get shut down and sued, but when Jewish people do it (open ai, zuck etc), then stackoverflow is just done? All so tiresome

Slapping takes.

*The name is:* I-I-Mean-I'd-See-The-Benefits-Of-AI-But-At-The-Same-Time-I'd-Be-Extremely-Careful-If-You're-Just-Learning-How-To-Code-And-Using-An-AI-Maybe-As-Like-A-Question-And-Answer-You-Could-Certainly-Use-I-Think-ChatGPT-Is-A-Better-Learning-Assistant-Tool-Than-Copilot-I-Think-Copilot-Will-Spoon-Feed-You-And-Ultimately-Just-Leave-You-Fat-And-Useless-Agen