Stack Overflow questions per year

As India's IT services export revenue climbed toward $200 billion annually, Stack Overflow questions per year began falling — a negative correlation of -0.9719 that generously implies Indian IT professionals are simply too competent to need the site anymore. The alternative explanation — that Stack Overflow's decline is partly due to developers asking AI chatbots instead — is less flattering to everyone involved.

Stack Overflow question volume peaked around 2014 and declined steadily through the late 2010s and early 2020s, driven by the rise of AI coding assistants, improved documentation, and community fatigue. India's IT services exports grew consistently as the industry matured. The negative correlation is almost entirely spurious — one trend reflects a platform's maturity cycle while the other reflects an entire nation's economic development.

A negative correlation between two unrelated trends is just as seductive as a positive one — the brain reads it as one thing causing the other to shrink. But expertise and forum posts do not trade in a zero-sum market.