Stack Overflow questions per year

As the thrift store market has grown, Stack Overflow questions per year have declined, a negative correlation of -0.985 that suggests either that software developers have switched from asking questions online to shopping at Goodwill, or that AI code assistants are replacing both Stack Overflow and the need for new clothes simultaneously. The code is generated, the jacket is secondhand, and the chart draws a line between digital knowledge-seeking and physical bargain-hunting.

Stack Overflow questions peaked around 2017–2018 at roughly 12 million per year and have since declined to about 5 million, as GitHub Copilot, ChatGPT, and other AI tools increasingly provide answers directly in the IDE. Thrift store revenue grew from about 28 billion to over 53 billion between 2015 and 2023. One declines while the other rises, producing a negative correlation. Both trends are driven by different technological and cultural shifts: AI for Stack Overflow's decline, sustainability culture for thrifting's growth.

Nine years of Stack Overflow declining and thrift stores growing captures two simultaneous cultural shifts: the AI revolution in software development and the sustainability revolution in fashion. The developer stops asking questions online, the shopper starts buying clothes secondhand, and the chart records both transitions with the precision of a coefficient observing two different economies evolving in opposite directions.