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If we do not stop to help each other, what do we become?

212 points · 100 comments · signa11

  1. popularonion · · focus · HN ↗
    > I reached out for help. The standard response from everyone fell between ignoring me or telling me I need to "do it myself".

    > You know who did help me? Random strangers on Stack Overflow. People who had nothing to gain from helping me other than just trying to help someone in need.

    This part makes the entire post sound like a parody. Maybe Jeff Atwood has a wicked, self-deprecating sense of humor?

    Yeah no, ask for help on Stack Overflow and you were were more likely to be met with castigation and snide remarks. It was such a breath of fresh air when ChatGPT let us not have to deal with that community anymore.

    1. inerte · · focus · HN ↗
      Plus Stack Overflow was gamified. "Nothing to gain" except 12 different artifacts showing how awesome you are.
    2. beej71 · · focus · HN ↗
      I dunno man. In it's heyday, SO was pretty fucking awesome. IMHO. Just a massive amount of good information concentrated. And some bad, but a damn sight better than random Google searches even back then.
    3. Forgeties79 · · focus · HN ↗
      ChatGPT also isn’t going to tell you when your idea is a bad one and will happily assist you in your (unknowing) efforts to brick your computer. So there’s that.
      1. adamsb6 · · focus · HN ↗
        That hasn't been true for awhile.
    4. dofm · · focus · HN ↗
      You are very much talking about late era StackOverflow there.

      What marked it out originally (and was visible in some other less-travelled StackExchange sites rather later) was a culture of holding replies to a sort of account in the reply comments; people urging each other to make their replies better-sourced, less hollow, more responsive.

      The goal of being non-duplicative alas ultimately is always going to lead to a culture that polices itself too hard. I am an LLM cynic but I think it’s possible that LLMs could actually help steer that process more gently, guiding submitters to likely answers but also helping them fine-tune a more specific, narrow, never-asked question.

      1. necovek · · focus · HN ↗
        To be honest, LLMs already miss such nuance. Attempt to steer it through a narrow band, and it repeatedly tries to go back to the "average" (based on my experience with Claude Code with Fable, Opus 4.* and 5, Codex with GPT 5.*).

        Only repeated reasserting can keep it on the path: the difference is that you can without it closing the chat on you.

    5. mlhpdx · · focus · HN ↗
      I found SO pretty helpful and approachable in the day. Not perfect, but that’s true of anything involving people.
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