2008 founded Wavering
developer-tools · stackoverflow.com
Stack Overflow
something is at the door
17 years 339 days and counting
Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky, 2008. The answers remain. The ritual of asking is wobbling.
Why it lasted
- A decade of ranked answers is still the corpus every model trains on and every search result cites.
- Reputation as a game actually produced a library.
Times it almost ended
- The 2019-2023 moderation wars and the AI policy whiplash. The library is still there. The asking is not.
- ChatGPT made 'ask a question, wait, get snark' look like a museum demo.
What would finish it
- Models that are allowed to be the interface to that corpus, plus a generation that never earns the karma. Already happening.
Questions
Is Stack Overflow still up?
Yes, with a Wavering verdict: something is at the door. Founded 2008.
How long has Stack Overflow been around?
Stack Overflow has been up since 2008-09-15.
Why did Stack Overflow survive?
A decade of ranked answers is still the corpus every model trains on and every search result cites.
Could Stack Overflow still die?
Models that are allowed to be the interface to that corpus, plus a generation that never earns the karma. Already happening.