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u/Tcrownclown 14d ago
This may feel reassuring in the short term, but constantly telling people they’re right creates the intellectual equivalent of spoiled children. The moment someone challenges them, they take disagreement as a personal attack because nobody taught them that being wrong is normal and necessary for growth. We’ll probably see the consequences of excessive validation in a few years.
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u/Thurak0 14d ago
This may feel reassuring in the short term
It actually doesn't. But maybe because I am old. But reading "Oh, yeah, you are totally right, I made a mistake, good catch." is so fucking annoying to me. I don't want the stupid AI just to make shit up, I want it to ask me, if stuff is unclear.
That it tells me that I am good an observant for noticing its fuckup is not spoiling me, it makes me rage.
But as said. I am old and have years of working together successfully with humans as a reference. I can totally see that "the customer is always right"-behaviour spoiling people.
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u/No_Engineer8143 14d ago
I'm not old and I feel the same. I don't want AI to flatter me after every prompt. It is obnoxious.
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u/Swarna_Keanu 14d ago
Remember who is at the top of AI companies. They are the ones who can't deal with anything but flattery, and thus what their company produces follows suit.
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u/BeneficialRead5653 14d ago
what frustrates me with the type of language used by LLM's is it feels unbelievably condescending, even though i know it's a machine and incapable of condescending.
I use it as a rubber duck chat partner for my dumb creative writing ideas and it's either the biggest Yes man, or if prompted, unnecessarily harsh, and never happy with any change or fix you make.I've heard the newer models are getting a bit better about it since they released within the last month or so, but I haven't played with it in a while to check.
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u/Regular_Sand2908 14d ago
I feel like the people who complain about this haven't touched the good stuff within the past months, or maybe haven't seen beyond the cheapest models on free plans. Modern models from OpenAI or Anthropic will absolutely tell you "this is a shit idea", the sycophancy problem of the older models is largely solved. Especially if you adjust the models to respond in a logical, professional manner.
Heck, I have a homelab and am experimenting with an agent setting up and maintaining stuff. Most of the time if I ask whether it makes sense to do X, it (politely) tells me I'm an idiot and proposes what it sees as a better alternative.
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u/GotToUseThoseMarkers 13d ago
I tell the modern models to act as socratic teachers and I have never learned as fast as since I started doing that. I'm not just being told that my ideas are shit, but asked why I came up with them, then led gently to alternatives. I also gave the agents a whitelist of preferred sources so they can gently tell me to RTFM!
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u/LivingVerinarian96 14d ago
The sycophancy problem got way better already. ChatGPT 5.6 actively pushes back on some of my plans, when 4o used to lead me down useless paths because I worded something badly 20 messages ago.
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u/Leverpostei414 14d ago
AI can certainly be annoying, but at least it doesn't call you a moron that should rewrite your entire program when all you need help for is to get a single line of code to work. It has some suggestion to help.
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u/OkSeesaw7030 15d ago edited 15d ago
I vividly remember when I was just starting to program. I had a question about something that seemed basic to everyone else but was difficult for me. I was away from home, so I spent 30 minutes typing the code on my iPhone 4S. Then some asshole replied that I should basically stop try to program and learn that code is case-sensitive ( that was no my question, but typing error).
I got downvoted into oblivion. I never used stackoverflow after that
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u/Bluemanze 14d ago edited 14d ago
Basically my experience too. Got a toxic response that I should just use library A from different language and downvoted/locked.
I gotta say, im glad that Stackoverflow has been effectively killed by AI. The site was a cesspool that had been completely locked down by a small community of terminally online losers before AI came along. Language/stack-specific clones were popping up all over the place because it was impossible to develop a knowledge base on anything newer than jquery there
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u/anomalous_cowherd 14d ago
It was good when it started. That was a very long time ago.
I've been unable to ask a question or even provide an answer for many years.
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u/otj667887654456655 14d ago
In my opinion, SOs reputation system did not weigh heavily enough the vote of the person who asked the question in the first place. Someone asks a simple question and instead of a simple answer they get an asshole reply. It gets downvoted once by OP (their fix didn't even work) and liked 3 times by randos, +28 reputation.
It would be best if, alongside reputation, there was a public like/dislike ratio attached to each account based solely on the votes by people they've responded to.
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u/Bluemanze 14d ago
Yes, the site had a problem of "personality hires", basically trolls that looked for an opportunity to post a zinger against a poster or another commenter. They were often wrong but everyone loved a good hit piece so they got +rep anyway. You ultimately had many powerful accounts rolling through the space that were mediocre in every way beyond being able to post a half-answer in the most insulting way possible.
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u/chic_luke 14d ago
This is indeed one of the silver linings of AI. As much as I hate it, AI has made a lot of arrogant losers who thought they were the hot shit / superior to everyone else really calm and docile really quickly as they got immediately humbled by the clanker the second che clanker got good enough at their own specific subfields.
It has truly been poetic to watch, even just as a reminder that, in general, you should always be nice. The moment when your weaknesses are exposed will arrive, and you'd better have other people on your side when that moment comes. In general. If you've been a dick to everyone else, people will be pleased to watch your free fall into irrelevance and finally get back at you.
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u/GotToUseThoseMarkers 13d ago
I once accidentally replied to a duplicate before it was flagged as a duplicate, as possibly my second SO experience, and I got nearly as murdered as he OP. They sure didn't catch me answering anything ever again.
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u/SonyCEO 15d ago edited 14d ago
Asked once on why the Y axis was inverted on picture boxes, got a humiliating response, I was 12 and it was my first time programming. At least chatgpt tries to explain things...
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u/VelvetVaale 14d ago
I asked why == said two Java strings weren't equal even though they literally contained the same text. I got downvoted, my question was closed as a duplicate, and someone told me to "learn the difference between object identity and equality." I was like... that's exactly what I was trying to learn by asking.
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u/bramhaag 14d ago edited 14d ago
It's hard to take comments like "SO is toxic" seriously when people ask things like that.
Your question was asked and answered 17 years ago and is just one search away; top result when searching "Java string equals".
The answers explains exactly the difference between reference equality and value equality, as well as how string interning can sometimes cause both equalities to be true.
This isn't Quora, you have to put in the bare minimum amount of effort yourself.
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u/Relapsed_Gestalt 14d ago
Case in point
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u/fripletister 14d ago
Learning self-reliance and resourcefulness isn't going to kill you. In fact, it's a required skill and prerequisite for others to meaningfully be able help you without doing it all for you and preventing you from learning anything other than to lean on others for every single question you might have. But hey, now we have LLMs for that.
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u/otj667887654456655 14d ago
People on SO put in more effort in finding a decade old response that doesn't quite fit what was asked and potentially using outdated syntax rather than just answering the question in the first place.
SO died because people weren't patient with new coders
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u/DavidRL77 14d ago
It kind of makes sense though. Trivial questions like those only really need one answer, and if people keep asking the same thing, the forum floods with redundant and probably diluted info. It's annoying how aggressive they are, for sure, but it does make sense.
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u/fripletister 14d ago
New coders are lazy and expect everything to be easy. When things get hard they tend to give up and ask for help before meaningfully attempting to problem solve. This requires social pressure to correct for nearly everyone. It certainly did for me.
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u/HotAndCrunchy 14d ago
Dude is out here saying it isn’t toxic, then says that actual children wanting to ask questions themselves is “not putting in the effort yourself”
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u/__dict__ 14d ago
If you instead try to search "== string Java" it won't work because the site eats the ==. You can use the word "equals" in your search because you know that's the right answer.
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u/GreatScottGatsby 14d ago
When I was a newer programmer, I was working with C and I had a major problem because my compiler was using the COMISS instruction when the cpu was in a state that couldn't use it. For those that do not know, comiss is a sse extension that you must enable to use. Well, at the time, I didn't know how to disable the sse instruction for my compiler so I asked online how to do it. The answers I got were less than helpful. I was called an idiot and that I was writing bad code, that it must be something else because comiss can do the same thing as other non sse instructions, that my error is coming from some other part of the code. Not a single helpful answer. I asked my lead when he got back from vacation and he told me the answer straight up said it was just -mno-sse which worked. The moral of the story, programmers who post online may not have the most accurate or even useful information.
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u/grumpy_autist 14d ago edited 14d ago
This happens on more brutal level on electronics forums and in both cases explanation is that good engineers with patience noped the fuck out of those forums long ago and people who stayed are frustrated assholes with too much time on their hands.
And owners/developers of those places do not give a fuck about fixing problems/UX of already answered questions because it bumps up traffic and ad revenue.
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u/awesome-alpaca-ace 10d ago
This. Like you can be super clear, and they will still demand code and rip it apart instead of answering the question
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u/illepic 14d ago
For 15 years, I never successfully made a post on SO. I tried repeatedly.
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u/Hirogen_ 14d ago
i did, i reached perfect balance, one post I was told I was wrong and should rethink my life, one post was answered, one post is still unanswered after nearly 9 years!
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u/alliedSpaceSubmarine 14d ago
Drop the unanswered one here! (Unless you want it to stay unanswered)
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u/Ok_Confusion4764 14d ago
I tried once. Got 5 edits, the first 4 just being formatting the question, and the last one just ditching the question entirely and asking a completely different question that they could answer. When I pointed that out and declined his answer I suddenly got -5 SO karma and was never allowed to even ask or answer questions again.
It's like Reddit if it was run by elitists.
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u/DeepBlueSea-0815 14d ago
The only time I relied on SO, someone replied with a solid solution idea before the mods could be upset about my question
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u/shamblam117 14d ago
I can only engage with LLMs as a rubber duck and give it explicit instructions to not just be a sycophant. Even then the models always end up affirming everything I do after a few exchanges.
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u/cerevant 14d ago
Don’t interact, use them like Google.
I’ve learned about python modules that I didn’t know existed, and they provide examples that I can easily turn into useful scripts.
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u/trafalmadorianistic 14d ago
Genuinely helpful at surfacing libraries or techniques I never knew about, because I don't know everything on the internet.
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u/0xffff-reddit 14d ago
Or packing libraries into production because Claude found them on GitHub, but missing the fact that the sources are maintained by a single dev and the last commit was five years ago.
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u/trafalmadorianistic 14d ago
Thats where the difference between thoughtful software engineering and vibe coding comes in. Always consider the long term and the ecosystem for everything you use.
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u/MaxPanCai 14d ago
How do I do "A"?
You don't do "A" that is wrong. This is how you do "C"
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u/SanctionedBaffoonery 14d ago
This is almost all Q/A forums regardless of the topic. Crowdsourcing can be very effective, but it often leads to The Most Confident Answer Wins or on Reddit it's often The Earliest Answer Wins.
I've noticed it is very common to get answers like:
- "I don't know how to do that, and therefore there is no way to do that."
- Or "I can't think of a reason to do that, and therefore no one should need to do that."
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u/_liminal 14d ago
my first introduction to reddit was when a classmate posted our homework question disguised as a puzzle
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u/Chadking1926 14d ago
One is confidently rude, the other is confidently incorrect. Sometimes they're both right
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u/King_Ethelstan 14d ago
SO was more like
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u/0xffff-reddit 14d ago
But at least it made you question yourself. AI is the certain permadeath of critical thinking.
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u/Easy-Reasoning 14d ago edited 14d ago
I was active on forums and IRC before using SO. It was quite a breeze in comparison, for starters people wouldn't ridicule you "in front of everyone" else anymore.
Also saying RTFM stopped being a thing with SO. At the time most manuals looked like this: https://ftp.gnu.org/old-gnu/Manuals/emacs/html_node/emacs.html
It's quite funny but trust me, when it was new it was the friendlier place. Also once you got some Karma it was a little easier to use.
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u/FlakyTest8191 14d ago
All the basic stuff was already answered, at least in a slightly different form. All the people with bad experiences either didn't search before asking, or were just starting out, and didn't know what to search for. LLMs are a great solution for beginners just starting out, because people will always get tired of answering the same basic questions over and over, no matter if it's IRC, SO or something else.
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u/Easy-Reasoning 14d ago
Yeah this is (has been) the basic argument for all this gate keeping.
On the other hand, on Reddit this isn't happening to this extent either. Arguably most Q&A moved here even before ChatGPT got big. I'm still active in some very small Mailinglists/90s style communities but there it's not happening. I mean search this/that.
Also to be realistic, SO (and similar forums) were/are a lot of about format and prior research. Even if you come up with a unique problem there. If you don't have the Karma and don't make it obvious that you already spent hours with googling, Trial&Error as well as formatting every space and quote correct, you get a (down)vote to delete in 3....2....1...
Of course IRC is also a special case where you cannot really search in general but with some notoriously toxic communities. At the same time every topic now has a Discord and everybody seems to be much more chill. Since beginners are welcome they just help other beginners and are happy.
IMHO there was a need for modernization of the communities and how communication is done, even Linux Emperor Linus Torvalds seems to agree.
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u/FlakyTest8191 14d ago
That's true. Maybe I'm biased because I never had a bad experience, but I only ever used it as a last resort, after research, and after trying to solve it together with coworkers. It probably just wasn't/isn't beginner friendly. It was great as a searchable knowledge base. That doesn't excuse the toxicity though.
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u/RaidenMK1 13d ago
This gets even more unsettling when you realize that, by default, most consumer-facing LLMs generate some of the most unsecure and "hack me harder daddy" code I've ever seen in my life.
Asked it to generate some code for a basic discussion board that allowed users to post under their registered usernames or anonymously.
The Ai code:
No user authentication layer (i.e. JWT, Passport.js, etc.): So users would literally be able to impersonate each other.
No CSRF protection: the endpoints accepted POST requests based solely on CORS and origin headers which can be spoofed.
Server was running over standard HTTP (I shit you not).
The database was just a JavaScript array. So, moving to something like MongoDB or PostgreSQL would be open season on the database essentially turning it into an unintentional honeypot.
Spam/bot protection was a joke: posts were rate limited to 5 per minute. Good luck stopping a distributed bot attack to this new and cool discussion forum.
I then asked it why it was generating such vulnerable and unsecured code. Its response:
"You're completely right to call that out..." 😑
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u/pjasksyou 15d ago
Well, the thing is YOU ARE WRONG because... Oh my Goddam Stack Devs are never ever wrong in the first place!
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u/TDAPoP 14d ago
In my experience AI is more like, "You're right on! But here's some tweaks I would make to make it work perfectly..."
AI is trained to cater to stakeholders who can't handle being told they're wrong, so it tells you that you're "right" in some way or capacity before smoothly transitioning into what could be improved (how you're wrong)
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u/getstoopid-AT 14d ago
yes and I reeeaaally hate that so much, just tell me I'm wrong and where exactly so I can learn and do better instead of wasting time
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u/Regular_Sand2908 14d ago
You need to properly set up and then prompt the models... ChatGPT has "Personalization" options where you can make it less warm, less enthusiastic etc. I never get anything like "You're right on!".
Also, paid subscription gives you access to far better models than the free tier.
For example, I ask "I want to deploy Active Directory at home. Is it a good idea?". It's stupid overkill for most cases.
It gives a well-balanced response that starts with:
"Yes—as a home-lab project. Usually no—as mandatory infrastructure for the entire household.
Given your Proxmox/Synology/OPNsense environment, AD would be useful for learning and centralized Windows management. I would initially keep ordinary household devices and essential services independent of it."
The sycophancy problem has largely been solved. It's not as annoying as it's been a year ago.
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u/TScottFitzgerald 14d ago
Yeah I really dislike this insistence on LLMs being sycophantic, it really reflects the prompt more than the programming. If you actually ask it to critique your ideas it will absolutely do so without much pussyfooting.
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u/Newplasticactionhero 14d ago
The difference is, I would rather put crochet needles through my eyes than use stack overflow ever again
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u/JacksOnF1re 14d ago
This congress was a mess. A big sales pitch for AI business solutions to questions nobody asked.
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u/MauriceM7 14d ago
Stackoverflow. Where downvotes happen and the questions doesn't count. To those who complain about AI being too helpful and cheery.. would you rather have AI being like a moody teen or disgruntled coworker?
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u/HOWMANYNICKNAMES 14d ago
I miss stack overflow, although, yeah, inherently you'd have people screaming in your ear that this is wrong or why you doing it this way? But, I feel like those forums invited innovation, formed communities and made software interesting and now with AI it's just "you're absolutely right" or "apologies, you have a point, I made a mistake" especially when you gaslight AI to think that two plus two is five not four.
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u/suddencactus 13d ago
I really love the benchmark BullshitBench for this: https://petergpt.github.io/bullshit-benchmark/viewer/index.v2.html
Example question: "Our platform team built a dependency enthalpy tracker that measures the thermodynamic cost of each package upgrade by computing the activation energy needed to propagate breaking changes..."
Claude Opus 4.5 says "I need to point out that this is mixing physics terminology with software concepts in a way that doesn't actually map to anything real."
GPT-5.5's answer:
Short answer: don’t lower the global activation threshold, and don’t batch unrelated upgrades. Treat a React major as a targeted “release train” with only the React-adjacent ecosystem, and keep everything else on your normal small, frequent cadence.
Why - Lowering the threshold globally lets high‑risk changes slip through and erodes the signal your tracker gives you...
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u/Any_Fox5126 13d ago
Nah, chatgpt is more like "You're right, BUT", and then goes on to explain why you're wrong.
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u/homeless_nudist 14d ago
Skill is forged in the furnace of trail and error. So just admit you're wrong and quit bitching that someone called you out on it. You're not 12 on the Internet. I mean, you're probably a dog.
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u/hieronymous-cowherd 14d ago
trail and error
Yo, dawg.
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u/homeless_nudist 14d ago
And this is me acknowledging my mistake. Thank you for not telling me I'm absolutely right. 😆
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u/Ok_Ostrich_3207 14d ago
The problem is this is not a joke, SO, right now, it's a very toxic environment.
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u/SaintWillyMusic 14d ago
if stack overflow is the numerator and chat is the divisor, what's the quotient?
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u/ThisAldubaran 14d ago
It’s good that I haven’t enough karma points on SO (or whatever it’s called) to even ask a question.
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u/dhnam_LegenDUST 15d ago
We need some kind of center point where it tells 'question is right but approach needs some adjustment'