[yura]

I've learned so many things on SO though. For example, some amazing answers there made me realize the power of sed and awk, and motivated me to learn it.

Ironically, I think the greatest quality of SO is exactly what most people complain about: that sometimes when you ask how to do X, they will tell you that X is a bad idea and you should probably do Y. I've learned many more efficient ways to do what I was trying to do, good security practices, and so on, because of this culture. Whereas if you ask ChatGPT how to do X, it'll happily tell you how to do X, even if X is a bad idea. (As a bonus, it might make something up if X is impossible to do.)

Besides, ChatGPT's answers are mediocre, by the definition of the word: dead average. You'll never get some guru-level insight from ChatGPT that you would sometimes get from a particularly exceptional answer in SO.

Note: I don't mean to say that SO is perfect, there's plenty of bad answers and it has other problems too. I just think SO does more good than harm to novices who want to become better at the trade, whereas ChatGPT is downright harmful for learning.