I remember the switch from random discussion forum that preceded it to stack overflow, the problem with random forums were that the answer was hidden somewhere down or on page 3. Stack overflow was significant improvement in this regard (to a point that I only searched programming question with site:stackoverflow.com to filter out other methods), the question was curated and updated. Now we have new thing that is even better so there is no going back. The progression was roughly:

1. Random website

2. Random thematic blog, seo'd

3. Random forum

4. Curated question portal like SO

5. Thematic subreddit when it became impossible to ask on SO

6. LLM