Blog
Stack Overflow Business
Stack Internal: the knowledge intelligence layer that powers enterprise AI.
Stack Data Licensing: decades of verified, technical knowledge to boost AI performance and trust.
Stack Ads: engage developers where it matters — in their daily workflow.

Issue 336: Tracking the evolution of software development

A lot has changed in technology in the last year. Our tried-and-true coding processes have now been replaced with AI workflows and autonomous agents that feel out of a futuristic science fiction novel. All these changes can be hard to track but lucky for you, dear reader, Stack Overflow has been tracking the evolution of software and the developer community for the last 16 years with our Annual Developer Survey. This year, we want to know your thoughts on all things technology, from the programming languages you’re using to how much ROI you’re really getting from autonomous agents.

And just like the 16 years of our Developer Survey, this Overflow has been giving you 336 issues’ worth of stories and knowledge. This issue is no exception. We’ve got everything from dubious early-internet scripts to how investments really work in business to the woes of being a manager. It’s all ready to go, down below.

From the blog

The 2026 Developer Survey is now open (for human developers only)!

Once again, we're asking for your help to take the temperature of software development.

Oh the places you’ll go with spatial data

Ryan is joined by  Jeffrey Hightower, VP of Places Data at Microsoft, and Amy Rose, CTO of the Overture Maps Foundation, to chat about their partnership in bringing spatial data to the next generation of Microsoft tools; how Overture’s 50 organization members are creating open, standardized, and interoperable  global spatial data sets; and their solutions to the innate challenges of trying to digitally map the world.

Code isn’t the only thing causing your production failures

Ryan sits down with Anish Agarwal, CEO and co-founder of Traversal, to chat about why AI coding agents have made writing code easier but running it safely in production harder, why production failures are really caused by interactions between systems and not just the code itself, and how teams can troubleshoot more effectively when traditional observability tools are not enough for agentic AI workflows.

Interesting questions

What criteria can researchers use to self-check if they publish "useless noise"?

Being occasionally useless at work is just part of working.

How does a business get money from investors?

By asking nicely?

What math problem is Nabokov trying to describe?

The great evils of the world include Humbert Humbert and mathematical word problems.

If an AI is pre-trained (no fine-tuning) purely and exclusively on GPL/GPL-compatible code, are its outputs GPL-compliant?

Where did you come from, where did you go? Where did you come from GLP-compliant code?

Links from around the web

The truth about being a manager

With great managerial power comes great managerial responsibility (and hours).

5 monitors on a Commodore 128!

Not even the Commodore 128 is safe from modern multi-tasking.

You can't unit test for taste

“The LLM lies but it does have taste.”

Matt’s Script Archive: the scripts that reshaped the web

As they say: the children are the future…and a code security risk.

Our sixteenth Annual Developer Survey is now open and we want to hear your thoughts on all things software. Take the survey now!