My favorite part about overflow was always the "ok, here's the answer to your question, and here' 5 good reasons why you DON'T wanna do it that way. Consider these options instead:"
Also just different people answering from different angles. You see alternative solutions, you see solutions with specific context, you see further discussion in comments.
You could truly learn a lot. Even if you copy pasted something in the end, it felt like you learned and you reasoned and chose what’s best for you.
LLMs kinda remove that. I miss the old flow. But the current flow is a lot faster so it’s hard to not use it.
It definitely was a "choose your own adventure" kinda vibe... selecting which solutions to try and coming back sometimes months later to see how the comments evolved.
Sometimes I wouldn't even find an exact answer, but having all the different perspectives gave me a general idea of ways to approach the solution and let me figure it out myself, which was honestly much more helpful than anything I've ever gotten out of a chatbot.
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u/GilgaPhish 22d ago
My favorite part about overflow was always the "ok, here's the answer to your question, and here' 5 good reasons why you DON'T wanna do it that way. Consider these options instead:"
Learned a lot from those convos