Friction Between Programming Professionals and Beginners • Hacker News Board

Re: Friction Between Programming Professionals and Beginners

#141

Post by Xcelerate » Wed, Feb 10, 2016, 6:09 PM UTC

doktrin wrote: post #58

I guess I'm going to be the asshole today : If someone lets a few rough edges on SO dissuade them from learning, they probably didn't care for any of this to begin with. I mean, every single one of these traumatized "beginner" comments were sourced from reddit - where there are at least a half dozen subs that would gladly accommodate questions unsuitable for SO. On a related note, I also don't understand why there is…

> If someone lets a few rough edges on SO dissuade them from learning, they probably didn't care for any of this to begin with.

Or perhaps people have different levels of emotional sensitivity (for environmental or genetic reasons). I detest conflict and go to extremes to avoid it; thus I try to stay away from situations that entail a lot of negative interpersonal interaction. If I was just now learning to program, an abrasive comment on SO would not turn me off to programming, but it would make me dislike certain types of people more, and in the future I would steer clear of that particular website.

Re: Friction Between Programming Professionals and Beginners

#142

Post by padseeker » Wed, Feb 10, 2016, 6:11 PM UTC

What are the three great virtues of a programmer: laziness, impatience, and hubris?

What would compel those who hang around Stackoverflow to be complete assholes to those who ask questions? Definitely hubris, and most probably impatience.

As a mediocre programmer I've been subject to ridicule from experts. I remember when I was trying to learn ExtJS (before is was Sencha) and for the life of me I could not get past a bug. I went on the ExtJS posting board.

Along the way I noticed one guy who answered replied to a lot of posts, but frequently not with an answer. It was more often than not to ridicule the original poster. Sometimes he would help but more often than not he would make a derogatory comment. I eventually broke down, and decided to post a question on the board, and within a short period of time the aforementioned guy replied, but did not provide a real answer. Something about 'you clearly don't know how to debug'. Yes dumbass, I can't figure it out that's why I'm asking.

I don't think any particular field has a shortage of arrogant know-it-alls that take pleasure in lording over the masses and gain pleasure out of humiliating those who they perceive as being beneath them. However programmers can be a funny lot, and without going too far out on a ledge there are quite a few of us who are brilliant at code but not so much in other areas of our lives.

Plus I have to wonder how many of us programmers have been on the receiving end of abuse in other areas of our lives, and take that repressed frustration out on others in the area we have confidence in.

Re: Friction Between Programming Professionals and Beginners

#143

Post by teach » Wed, Feb 10, 2016, 6:11 PM UTC

legulere wrote: post #50

It's almost laughable that there's no work to identify the most common mistakes beginners do and let compilers etc. explain them. You probably could catch most of them. It's also ridiculous through how many hoops you have to jump to start programming. Take python, which is touted as a begginner friendly programming language. First you need to install it (most people use windows or os x, which both don't have python 3…

There actually has been quite a bit of work on this front. DrScheme, for example.

It's a very, very hard problem, though. And computers cannot, in general, figure out what's wrong with broken code.

Re: Friction Between Programming Professionals and Beginners

#144

Post by jrs235 » Wed, Feb 10, 2016, 6:14 PM UTC

mettamage wrote: post #139

I am surprised that no one linked the What Have You Tried article by Matt Gemmell. http://mattgemmell.com/what-have-you-tried/ This is how I almost never got my SO topics closed. I state beforehand what I have tried, how certain SO questions may look related but are still not giving me enough knowledge to solve my problem. I do my best to make a convincing argument that I need help and can't make it on my own. A few…

"Beginners need to understand: why would I put more time into solving someone else's problems than the person asking me the question?"

Is this because of how pervasive instant gratification [and entitlement] have become?

Re: Friction Between Programming Professionals and Beginners

#145

Post by wdrw » Wed, Feb 10, 2016, 6:18 PM UTC

mettamage wrote: post #139

I am surprised that no one linked the What Have You Tried article by Matt Gemmell. http://mattgemmell.com/what-have-you-tried/ This is how I almost never got my SO topics closed. I state beforehand what I have tried, how certain SO questions may look related but are still not giving me enough knowledge to solve my problem. I do my best to make a convincing argument that I need help and can't make it on my own. A few…

StackOverflow serves a dual purpose: (1) to answer the immediate question of the original poster, and (2) to serve as a reference for anyone encountering the same problem in the future. I'd say that (2) is more important - good question/answer pairs on SO have helped hundreds or even thousands of developers beyond the original poster. Answering "what have you tried" may help with purpose (1), but is often just distracting for (2). If I'm looking for a way to do X, reading through someone's failed attempts to do X is a waste of time. And this whole notion of making someone "struggle a bit" is entirely misplaced when you keep purpose (2) in mind. Let's say I'm not a CSS expert and I'm trying to find a way to make a sticky page footer. I can "struggle for a bit", spend maybe 30-60min researching the topic and come up with a solution myself, without ever involving StackOverflow. Multiply this by 1,000 developers facing the same problem, and you have 500-1000 hours of wasted developer effort. Compare this to spending 15min to write a precisely-worded question (but without "steps you've tried"), and an expert spending 15min to write up an answer. From that point on, the piece of knowledge is available to anyone, enormously amplifying the impact of this initial time investment. Of course I'm oversimplifying, but I see this amplification effect continuously ignored in discussions of StackOverflow posting guidelines. I think this attitude of "show your work" and "make the original poster struggle a bit" comes from the days of IRC/Usenet questions, where an answer to a question only helped one person, not thousands.

Re: Friction Between Programming Professionals and Beginners

#146

Post by bigtunacan » Wed, Feb 10, 2016, 6:18 PM UTC

bargl wrote: post #65

mhurron wrote: post #8

> Attempt to answer the question, or don’t comment at all. Don’t tell them to RTFM, Google it, No, just no. There is no point to any of all this search technology and this accumulated knowledge if no one uses it. Someone asking a question that is answered in the documentation or has been asked and answered over and over should be pointed at those sources. One of the most important skills anyone is going to learn in a…

One of my biggest issues with SO is questions that have been answered but the answer is wrong. Updating the answer to be correct is REALLY hard, especially when the user was a one off user, who asked a very good question. They just got a bad answer. Another issue I see with SO is, a question gets answered then the language advances and boom the answer is now invalidated. So someone asks, "Hey I know it's answered her…

What's worse with SO is someone (new user usually) posts a good question. Someone gives a shitty answer that gets them by and it gets accepted. 10 people come along with correct answers, but nothing you can do to switch the "accepted" answer.

The bounty program is also bullshit. I 100% agree with the fact that the bounty should not be returned, otherwise dishonest users would just not award a bounty on the correct answer so they could get their karma back.

The 50% auto award of bounties to most up voted though is just garbage. I have had answers that are completely off base that extremely quickly get up voted and they end up getting the bounty. I'm pretty sure there is some type of voter ring style up vote fraud happening on bounties; at this point I doubt I will ever offer a bounty again since it typically no longer helps in me to find relevant answers.

Re: Friction Between Programming Professionals and Beginners

#147

Post by mettamage » Wed, Feb 10, 2016, 6:21 PM UTC

jrs235 wrote: post #144

mettamage wrote: post #139

I am surprised that no one linked the What Have You Tried article by Matt Gemmell. http://mattgemmell.com/what-have-you-tried/ This is how I almost never got my SO topics closed. I state beforehand what I have tried, how certain SO questions may look related but are still not giving me enough knowledge to solve my problem. I do my best to make a convincing argument that I need help and can't make it on my own. A few…

"Beginners need to understand: why would I put more time into solving someone else's problems than the person asking me the question?" Is this because of how pervasive instant gratification [and entitlement] have become?

Why would you call it instant gratification if the question also applies to when the expert is a beginner in another field? Also, edge cases should be nuanced. For example, typing up an answer in 2 minutes since you know a lot about the problem area in general, while the question was one sentence.

For me, it also shows motivation on the person asking the question (and vice versa). It's not effective to help someone who isn't going to do anything with the information.

I don't see how entitlement and instant gratification play a role.

Re: Friction Between Programming Professionals and Beginners

#148

Post by carussell » Wed, Feb 10, 2016, 6:24 PM UTC

milkytron wrote: post #109

32bitkid wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ever go to a gym and ask someone how to do a basic lift only to be scoffed at? Ever been to a foreign country and have someone berate you for not understanding how to navigate through some strange process or not knowing how to speak their language well enough? That's not asking, that's demanding that someone teach you. Its a brazen form of entitlement that completely disregards the state of the other person. In reg…

I think the point he was trying to make was don't be a dick. You can deny someone a gym lesson if you don't have time, they shouldn't be too upset about that. Or at least point them in the right direction. And I think it's a lot easier to be a dick online, which is why programming in particular has a lot of these situations.

> And I think it's a lot easier to be a dick online, which is why programming in particular has a lot of these situations.

I think it's a lot easier to be perceived as a dick online, too, and that probably accounts for something like an equal share of the frustration that people walk away with.

Re: Friction Between Programming Professionals and Beginners

#149

Post by drakonka » Wed, Feb 10, 2016, 6:25 PM UTC

Lawtonfogle wrote: post #122

marknutter wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, just no. There is no point to any of all this search technology and this accumulated knowledge if no one uses it. And here we have a prime example of why beginners find the programming community to be so abrasive, and worse, it's sitting at the top of this comment thread. Ask yourself, would this be the answer you give to a 12 year old girl who's taken an early interest in programming? Or a single mother who's…

>Ever go to a gym and ask someone how to do a basic lift only to be scoffed at? Ever been to a foreign country and have someone berate you for not understanding how to navigate through some strange process or not knowing how to speak their language well enough? Ever asked a stranger out and been shot down harshly? Part of the reason some people learn to respond this way is because there are so many people bothering t…

> Ever asked a stranger out and been shot down harshly?

I don't think this is a great example. Just because it happens doesn't mean that's a great response, either. It probably took courage for someone to work up the guts to ask you out. Even if you have no desire of accepting their offer it's just common decency to decline with respect and not make them feel like absolute crap while doing it. The same thing could be said for answering questions - except it's even easier, because when it comes to a question StackOverflow you don't have to even respond to not be an asshole. If someone doesn't feel like it's worthy of their time they can just move on and not say anything at all.

Re: Friction Between Programming Professionals and Beginners

#150

Post by lordCarbonFiber » Wed, Feb 10, 2016, 6:26 PM UTC

scott_s wrote: post #64

mhurron wrote: post #8

> Attempt to answer the question, or don’t comment at all. Don’t tell them to RTFM, Google it, No, just no. There is no point to any of all this search technology and this accumulated knowledge if no one uses it. Someone asking a question that is answered in the documentation or has been asked and answered over and over should be pointed at those sources. One of the most important skills anyone is going to learn in a…

I think you are misinterpreting what the author means. I understand the author to mean this is good: "Python strings have a method, rstrip, for that. You can read about it here: https://docs.python.org/3.5/library/stdtypes.html#string-met... . I find Googling 'python docs x', where x is what you're looking for is a quick way to see if Python has that thing included in the standard library." And this is bad: "It's in…

Continuing on your point, one thing I've found with talking with less tech oriented people is that Googling is very much a developed skill. If you don't have the foundation of knowledge to understand what question you're actually asking it becomes very hard to RTFM even if the earnest desire is there.

In my experience, when a more junior co-worker has a question outside my immediate expertise, I find my self searching for what they ~meant~ not what they are actually asking.

I think a lot of disconnect in the community comes from this acquired auto parsing.