I used it about 15 minutes ago, to help me diagnose a UI issue I was having. It gave me an answer that I would have figured out, in about 30 minutes, in about 30 seconds. My coding style (large files, with multiple classes, well-documented) works well for AI. I can literally dump the entire file into the prompt, and it can scan it in milliseconds.
I also use it to help me learn about new stuff, and the "proper" way to do things.
Basically, what I used to use StackOverflow for, but without the sneering, and much faster turnaround. I'm not afraid to ask "stupid" questions -That is critical.
Like SO, I have to take what it gives me, with a grain of salt. It's usually too verbose, and doesn't always match my style, so I end up doing a lot of refactoring. It can also give rather "naive" answers, that I can refine. The important thing, is that I usually get something that works, so I can walk it back, and figure out a better way.
I also won't add code to my project, that I don't understand, and the refactoring helps me, there.
I have found the best help comes from ChatGPT. I heard that Claude was supposed to be better, but I haven't seen that.
I don't use agents. I've not really ever found automated pipelines to be useful, in my case, and that's sort of what agents would do for me. I may change my mind on that, as I learn more.
What I like about Chatbots vs SO is the ability to keep a running conversation instead of 3+ tabs and tuning the specificity toward my problem.
I've also noticed that if I look up my same question on SO I often find the source code the LLM copied. My fear is that if chatbots kill SO where will the LLM's copied code come from in the future?
Yesterday, I was looking at an answer, and I got a popup, saying that a user needed help. I dutifully went and checked the query. I thought “That’s a cool idea!”. I enjoy being of help, and sincerely wanted to be a resource. I have gotten a lot from SO, and wanted to give back.
It was an HTML question. Not a bad one, but I don’t think I’ve ever asked or answered an HTML question on SO. I guess I have the “HTML” tag checked, but I see no other reason for it to ask my help.
Yeah, I think it’s done.
As I never used SO except to understand it for doing business for developers, I know many found the community aspect/self building/sense of worth aspect important, same with Quora. Do you have a idea of how this will change things for developers? Is that a real thing I was seeing? (maybe even an opportunity!)
One of the reasons that SO became so successful, was the "gamification" of answering questions. Eventually, they started giving the questions, themselves, more attention, but, by then, the damage was done.
Asking questions became a "negative flag." If you look at most of the SO members with very high karma, you will see that their total count of questions asked, is a 1-digit value, with that digit frequently being "0."
So the (inevitable) result, was that people competed to answer as many questions as possible, in order to build high karma scores. In its heyday, you would get answers within seconds of posting a question.
The other (inevitable) result, was that people who asked questions, were considered "lesser people," and that attitude came across, loud and clear, in many of the interactions that more senior folks had with questioners. They were treated as "supplicants." Some senior folks were good at hiding that attitude, some, not so much.
Speaking only for myself, I suspect that I have more experience and expertise, actually delivering product, than many of the more senior members, and it is pretty galling, to be treated with so much disrespect.
And, of course, another inevitable thing, was that the site became a spamhaven. There was a lot of "shill-spamming," where someone asks a question, and many of the "answers" point to some commercial product. If you attempted to seriously answer the question, your answer was often downvoted, causing you damage. I think they got nuked fairly quickly, but it was quite a problem, for a while (It's still a huge problem in LinkedIn groups. I never participate in those, anymore).
I have found that, whenever I design anything; whether an app, or a community, I need to take human nature into account.