You are absolutely correct, the board did used to be more popular. To be even more specific we used to get a lot more posts before when the Hot Scripts Forum used to be called "ProgrammingTalk.com". It seems that integrating the Forum into the site actually hurt our popularity more then help.
But a lot of visitors still view the forums and search the topics, and a lot of good programmers and moderators are still here and willing to help. So help us get our groove back by asking some decent programming questions we can answer you.
Pete