Why Devs Are Quietly Leaving Stack Overflow in 2025

“I haven’t opened Stack Overflow in months.”

You hear it more often now, in Discord chats, on Twitter/X, even in pull request banter.

What happened to the developer internet’s most sacred temple?

🧵 TL;DR

Stack Overflow was once the holy grail for every developer’s “why-is-this-not-working” moment.

In 2025, it’s no longer the go-to.

From AI tools to developer-first Discords, here’s why many of us have quietly walked away and whether SO can bounce back.

📉 Stack Overflow Isn’t Dying. It’s Just Being Ignored

Daily active users are down. New questions are way down.

And if you look closely, even long-time contributors are slowly ghosting the platform.

📊 Traffic Trend:

Stack Overflow Isn’t Dying — It’s Just Being Ignored

Stack Overflow’s own 2024 insights admitted:

“More people are reading than contributing.”

Which is a polite way of saying:

Devs are done engaging.

💬 What Changed for Developers?

🚀 AI Assistants

Why wait for someone to answer when ChatGPT or Copilot can generate the answer instantly?

What Changed for Developers?

🧊 Community Tone

Ask a question in 2025 and you risk:

Getting downvoted for not “Googling harder”
Being told your 2025 error has a 2013 solution
Having your question closed before it’s answered

“Stack Overflow’s community is the reason I stopped asking questions.”

👥 New Alternatives

Devs are flocking to:

Discord servers like Devcord, Frontend Café
Reddit’s r/learnprogramming & r/webdev
TikToks with real, working code examples

New Alternatives

🧑‍💻 The Stack Overflow Experience Problem

Here’s what Stack Overflow still struggles with:

Answers locked in ancient formatting
Aggressive moderators
No room for nuance, just “your question has been asked before”

📷 Example:

The Stack Overflow Experience Problem<br>

Sometimes, you don’t want a historic answer
you want context for now.

🌐 Where Are Developers Hanging Out Instead?

🛠️ Tools:

ChatGPT for fast debugging and code generation
Phind for AI-assisted code search
GitHub Discussions for actual project-related support

💬 Communities:

Dev Discords: Real-time help, zero judgment
YouTube Shorts & TikTok tutorials
Reddit threads with actual context and empathy

“I get more help on Discord in 5 minutes than I ever did from SO in 5 years.”

— a frontend dev on r/webdev

🔮 Can Stack Overflow Win Us Back?

They’ve tried:

Partnering with OpenAI
Revamping their interface
Creating AI-based search features

But here's the problem:

It’s not just about tools.

It’s about culture.

Stack Overflow needs to become less hostile, more empathetic, and actually... fun?

We didn’t rage-quit Stack Overflow.

We just found better, faster, friendlier places to learn and grow.

But maybe it’s not too late for SO

if it listens, adapts, and invites us back in.

📣 Let’s Talk

Have you stopped using Stack Overflow too?

Tell your story in the comments.

I’m compiling the best replies into a timeline:

“The Great Stack Exodus of 2025.”

Why Devs Are Quietly Leaving Stack Overflow in 2025