Ask Lemmy

people suck online because there's zero physical consequences to being rude. this isn't a problem on forums like the one you visited, but all of them tbh

It’s funny, right? These dudes will simultaneously decry new programmers relying on AI to teach them but then will also turn around and mock and troll new users like duh… I’d talk to the ai too!

Some experienced programmers forget how difficult computers and programming can be for beginners. It's obvious for us to look at the error and resolve it, but for most people it's pretty arcane. Relevant XKCD

Unfortunately, I think this is also a right of passage of some sorts. If you want to continue programming you will encounter a problem that you can't ask or find the answer on the internet and you will have to work through it yourself. I've had problems I've been stuck in for weeks or months. At least for me, it's always been such a high when I finally solve these. :)

I assume the motivation for a lot of people to go online and answer people's technical questions is to puff up their ego

Nothing makes some sad sacks feel better about themselves than making fun of someone for not knowing what they have learned. Just know they have been pants on their heads stupid about something and had to ask for help. Count on it.

It's a certain kind of people. In a word, they are focused.

Within the circle of their focus they are gentle, deep, subtle and wise. Without, clumsy, crude and violent.

The realm of good manners is in that outside part.

IRC is still pretty popular with programmers and in my experience people are helpful on the various tech channels (on libera.chat at least)

Because it took 10, 20 years for them to start to know their ass from a hole in the ground. So they take all the pain of their learning experience and lob it back at you whenever you remind them of themselves starting out.

They might also resent newbies for the much better learning materials available today and even the possibility for easy shortcuts (llms). Back then there was no substitute for sitting down and fiddling with it for hours or reading a some poorly-written book.

Producers too, like music producers I mean. Though I can only speak to that field personally, it might be a similar situation, so I'll share.

Well actually, I mean I guess it's two things- one is that a male-dominated field with a lot of egos involved can pretty easily develop in a snooty direction. STEM careers are famous for that as well. It blows.

The second thing, the thing I was initially going to mention is that at least in the case of producing, there is an epic shitton of information you need to learn to do it well/properly, for starters. Even to just make your first piece, you need to actually STUDY it. That attracts two different archetypes, and the one that sucks is the overwhelming majority. :(

So, as you can probably imagine it's super easy to find courses/tutorials online to learn stuff; you can find the whole field plus music theory on YouTube for free. The problem is that a lot of beginners don't bother to do that, and/or don't think they'll need to. Unfortunately, it's these lazy fucking casuals that saturate all our "ask someone who knows" spaces with asinine, uniformed nonsense questions.

So you see, by the time you see a question from a legitimate learner, sometimes even a peer, you're so annoyed by the other sort that you can't sort them.

That's not fair to the legitimate learners, of course (and as someone who is not yet a full-on expert, I've been on the wrong end of this myself), but thats the sad state of things.

"Growing a thicker skin", or so I'm told, is the only solution. :(

I don't have any answer but I feel your pain. Years ago I wanted to learn C++ for Arduino and asking questions always seemed to have answers that talked down to me and made me feel stupid for asking.

I even tried proving that I made an effort to learn before asking. That didn't work either. People were still rude.

I gave up.

Years later I got into into Linux and started learning POSIX scripting and self-hosting. I again tried asking questions but still received mostly rude answers but this time there were people in the mix of replies that did try to help. It was slightly better.

I tried showing off a script I was proud of but I did something wrong and people rudely let me know about my mistake. They took no effort to educate me on why it was wrong. I asked for a reason to understand what I did wrong but was left with silence.

I didn't give up this time but I stopped asking for help and I'm still afraid to show off my projects.

It's the exact same bullshit I experienced in the trades. I quit my apprenticeship and left the trades because people refused to understand that someone else with less experience won't instinctively know all the basics. Starting something new is overwhelming and it's hard to retain all that information the first time learning it all.

I feel like rudeness towards beginners is one of the biggest hypocrisies when so much of progress is built on sharing knowledge.

One lesson I learned from a this is that I either take the time to answer a question fully or don't. I can at least feel good about the few times I spent answering a question. The people that asked the question were always appreciative of the time and effort I took to help them understand what they wanted to know.

Some people are like that, dunno why but programming has way more. It's a mindset of "How could you possibly not know [insert technojargon]."

There is a high amount of god complex in many advanced programmers

I have trained 6 people to fill my shoes in my role. 1 gave up. 1 got fired. 1 was never really a programmer and that resulted in an argument with management about the role actually needed (they call it tier 2 support but you need to be a competent programmer to debug the issues). 2 of the others took other jobs for much more pay. The last guy is still here and he's good I guess...

But I'm tired man... Tired of explaining the same things over again. It's not the new guy's fault but that doesn't change the fact that I've grown jaded. I tend to realize I being a jerk, apologize and tone it down. Doesn't change the fact that my gut response is jerkish.

The comments have people this post is talking about, yet they are too dense to realise it ahaha

As you can see, Lemmy has quite a few of these people, too.

It's weird, IRL and in some online venues, it seems like people are usually friendly and ready to helps newbies learn.

But then plenty of other online spaces seem to just invite elitism and negativity. The culture of 'rtm', 'lmgtfy' and 'marked as duplicate' doesn't encourage people to respect others.

StackExchange was the most discouraging place I ever asked a question as a beginner.

The two questions I ever asked were immediately downvoted to 0 before an answer was even given. And then the answer basically called out my errors without explaining how to fix them. The most helpful replies were people just giving me a full set of code that worked, but they never explained how it worked.

So I went back to lurking and hoping someone else has my question.