For the majority of the questions asked and answered on StackOverflow, LLMs are undeniably better. I’m thinking of things like ‘How do I do X in Python’, ‘How do I do X on Linux’, etc., questions that are small in scope, not open ended, and can be easily verified. For everything else LLMs range from rarely useful to outright misleading and counterproductive.
LLMs also don’t really enable coincidental discovery like search engines do. Having to RTFM or read a spec or a book or a blog post to figure out the answer to your question sometimes also teaches you about related and important concepts that you wouldn’t have come across otherwise, and usually there will be suggestions for further reading or a side bar with other interesting topics etc. Completely replacing search feels like a a bit like a trap, where what you get in immediate answers you lose in an unseen opportunity cost.
LLMs also don’t really enable coincidental discovery like search engines do. Having to RTFM or read a spec or a book or a blog post to figure out the answer to your question sometimes also teaches you about related and important concepts that you wouldn’t have come across otherwise, and usually there will be suggestions for further reading or a side bar with other interesting topics etc. Completely replacing search feels like a a bit like a trap, where what you get in immediate answers you lose in an unseen opportunity cost.