[deepsummer]

I think "number of questions asked" is the wrong metric. Because it feels like all the questions have already been asked. Whenever I need to know something, I can google it and find answers on Stack Overflow. I can't remember the last time I actually had to ask something. Or the last time I found a question that didn't already have a good answer. Stack Overflow's library of question is pretty complete, and the only reason for new questions are new tools.

Certainly LLMs are a huge factor, but I feel that LLMs rarely give good (and trustworthy!) answers to the things I would check on Stackoverflow. Just like LLMs are no good replacement for API references because they get the details wrong all the time.

[mvanveen]

I think this is true if there aren't new questions to be asked. But technologies shift and evolve all of the time.

One of my top StackOverflow questions for years was around the viability of ECMAscript 6. It's now essentially irrelevant because it's found wide adoption in browsers etc. but at the time a lot of people appreciated the question because they wanted to adopt the technology but weren't sure what its maturity was.

It's also true that some technology stacks mature to a point where there isn't much more to be asked but I think there will continue to be a place for forums of discussion where you can ask and get answers around newer, bleeding edge technologies, use cases etc.

[int_19h]

I find that most of the time, when doing research on anything non-trivial, I find a question on SO about this exact problem that has no answers because it was closed by the mods as a duplicate of something that doesn't actually answer that question (but rather something very vaguely related to it).