The Abracadabra of Copy-Paste Culture
Navigating Through a Sea of Code in a Copy-Paste World of Developers
A Rabbit out of the Educational Hat
Picture, if you will, a David Blaine street magic special. A crowd gathers around a quiet man with an air of mysterious calm. Now, this magician isn't Blaine, but an AI called ChatGPT. Like a seasoned illusionist, it performs feats that baffle, excite, and maybe disturb the unsuspecting public.
And then it calls an unfortunate volunteer from the audience - Chegg. Known for its online tutoring, textbook rentals, and the holy grail of homework help, Chegg has been the Robin to millions of students' Batman. But like any good magic show, we know the scene is set for an unexpected twist. That was this month, in early May, CEO Dan Rosensweig revealed a significant spike in student interest in ChatGPT since March. And then he said the magic (sinister?) words:
“We now believe it’s having an impact on our new customer growth rate.”
The share prices responded accordingly - here's a snapshot of the financial roller coaster ride, courtesy of Yahoo Finance.
So how does Chegg intend to handle this? Chegg is developing its own AI product, CheggMate, in collaboration with none other than OpenAI - the very mastermind behind ChatGPT. The plot thickens, doesn't it? Unfortunately, the investors remain unconvinced and the stock prices reflect it.
The Code Rabbits
The world of developers is also like a grand magic show, where code is the rabbit and Stack Overflow is the conjurer's hat. This digital wonderland has been a reliable trick in the developer's repertoire, reliably producing solutions to the most confounding of coding conundrums.
In Dec 2022, Stack Overflow decided to ban posting information generated by ChatGPT. The Explanation was that there are highly inaccurate answers and this is “substantially harmful to the sites and the users looking for correct answers”. Sounds fair, for we know ChatGPT suffers from “AI Hallucinations."
But is there more to it? Let's peel back the velvet curtain a little more.
Since the grand entrance of ChatGPT in November, Stack Overflow's visitor numbers have been as inconsistent as a magician's apprentice performing for the first time - shaky, with a clear downward trend. Sure, there was a momentary flourish in March, a successful card trick perhaps, but the overall show seems to be losing its audience.
Stack Overflow visitor numbers (in millions) compiled from Similar Web
Now, since Stack Overflow is a private company, there’s no evaluating their stock prices or revenues. However, it's as clear as a crystal ball prediction that there's a problem, even if we can't definitively say ChatGPT is the mischievous rabbit causing the chaos.
The Street Magician of the Coding World
Let's rewind the tape to 2008. Picture a busy urban corner where two street magicians, Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky, pull a rabbit out of a hat. But this isn't just any rabbit, and the hat isn't ordinary either. The rabbit is Stack Overflow, and the hat is the gap in the market for a dedicated, community-driven Q&A platform for programmers.
Like a shiny new deck of cards, Stack Overflow's intuitive interface, gamified reputation system, and commitment to high-quality content dazzled the audience. Developers, intrigued by this new act on the street, started to gather, and like an audience delighted by an unexpected magic trick, they began to participate, contribute, and collaborate. Its quality was maintained by trusted community members acting as vigilant (gamified) gatekeepers. These moderators ensured that the platform's quality remained as untarnished as a magician's new cloak - verifying answers, flagging inappropriate content, and maintaining a respectful (mostly, see the next section) environment . This dedication to quality cbuilt trust, solidifying Stack Overflow's reputation as a reliable source of information.
As Stack Overflow's audience grew, it began to shape the landscape of software development culture. Encouraging collaboration, code review, and the establishment of industry best practices, Stack Overflow was the magician's wand that transformed software development from a solitary pursuit into a shared spectacle.
In 2019, Joel Spolsky, the then Chairman of the board, announced the new CEO taking over - Prashanth Chandrasekar. Hailing from Bangalore, a city that boasts the highest number of Stack Overflow users, Prashanth stepped onto the stage, ready to continue the captivating magic show that is Stack Overflow.
The High Cost of Good Magic
Why then, you might ask, is beloved Stack Overflow getting fewer bouquets from developers these days? It's akin to finding out that the charming street magician you loved is now, well, not so charming behind the scenes.
Whispers of the community turning “toxic” have started to infiltrate the crowd. It's not fair to say the whole magic show has gone sour, but there's a growing sentiment that some developers are using Stack Overflow as a stage to berate others rather than a space to share magical coding tricks.
The emphasis on precision and well-reasoned answers could come across as dismissive, much like a magician who won't reveal his secrets. This can lead to frustration or discouragement among those just trying to learn coding or a new skill.
And of course, there's the danger of encountering outdated information and repetitive content. With such a large crowd asking questions, similar queries often lead to duplicated answers, making it harder to find the right content.
Finally, there's the potential overemphasis on reputation points. While designed to promote quality contributions, critics argue that this focus can sometimes lead to an overemphasis on earning reputation points, rather than keeping up the community spirit of collaboration and learning.
But Stack Overflow's influence extends far beyond its perceived shortcomings. It's the grand theater where developers worldwide come to collaborate, share best practices, and accelerate their learning. It's where magic happens, where codes come alive and problems disappear in a puff of logic.Once you see it, you realize the true magic of Stack Overflow - a (still) supportive, inclusive community that empowers developers at all stages of their journey, from wide-eyed apprentices to seasoned sorcerers of code.
The Art of Making Rabbits Disappear
Prashanth Chandrasekar, the CEO of Stack Overflow, is taking a predictable route to a solution - he unveiled this April that much like Chegg, they're brewing their own concoction of AI models in an article titled “Community is the Future of AI”.
But much like Chegg, is that enough?
ChatGPT, trained on a diet of Stack Overflow answers, and digesting the wisdom of countless developers has become the proverbial fairy tail magic mirror. It saves you from the tedious quest of scouring through the vast kingdom of Stack Overflow to find 'an' answer (not necessarily 'the' answer) to your code conundrum. True, every now and then it slips up, hallucinating - unable to differentiate vetted code from wrong code.
So like Baline from our intro, did ChatGPT successfully trick the second unsuspecting volunteer after Chegg? Far from it. There will be many more twists and turns appearing on the horizon, and this is not the end.
After all, every magician knows that the real trick is not in the illusion, but in the journey to master it.
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