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Friction Between Programming Professionals and Beginners

programmingforbeginnersbook.com

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Re: Friction Between Programming Professionals and Beginners

#171

Post by slavik81 »

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…

Nothing's more frustrating than Googling a problem and finding that the first result is a post from someone with the exact same problem as you, with the only response being "Google it yourself".

Re: Friction Between Programming Professionals and Beginners

#172

Post by collyw »

Zikes wrote: post #31
crdoconnor wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You ask a complex question and they ask you why you're doing it. How is that alienating?

Many times I've seen that it's been out of a genuine desire to solve the asker's problem, but the asker has already started down the wrong path and is determined to see it through. A recent example: someone was using a map/hash object to store a series of documents, and needed a way to extract N items from the map for pagination reasons. They presented a for loop but said that something "felt wrong" about that. Many…

Its not always the wrong path, but the only path available to you if you have a complex system. You could do as the alternatives suggest, but you know that will affect some other part of your system. The reasons for needing a particular soluition aren't always available without more context.

Re: Friction Between Programming Professionals and Beginners

#173

Post by Zikes »

collyw wrote: post #172
Zikes wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many times I've seen that it's been out of a genuine desire to solve the asker's problem, but the asker has already started down the wrong path and is determined to see it through. A recent example: someone was using a map/hash object to store a series of documents, and needed a way to extract N items from the map for pagination reasons. They presented a for loop but said that something "felt wrong" about that. Many…

Its not always the wrong path, but the only path available to you if you have a complex system. You could do as the alternatives suggest, but you know that will affect some other part of your system. The reasons for needing a particular soluition aren't always available without more context.

Without having an ordered array of keys there's just no safe way to paginate a map. The map's own documentation says that key order has no guarantees, making it effectively random. It really is a silo'd issue, I can't even imagine what other factor could change the above facts without resorting to unsafe memory access.

Re: Friction Between Programming Professionals and Beginners

#174

Post by onetimePete »

The RTFM reply s are the equivalent of teaching a man locked in a box to become a magician, by putting a Houdini-manual on top of the box.

Its arrogant from the new users perspective, and basically just a result of the human mind purging negative moments, like ones own beginners frustration, lost in time.

Re: Friction Between Programming Professionals and Beginners

#175

Post by metaphorm »

badloginagain wrote: post #135
metaphorm wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

learning how to read technical documentation is a skill in its own right, and we all need to practice it in order to get good at it. obviously some documentation is better than others, and asking specific questions to fill in the gaps where documentation is unclear is a good thing to do. however, programming is very much driven by learning how to find the answers to problems on your own. often those answers are in th…

> all of these technical reading skills need to be practiced. beginners frequently make the mistake of denying themselves opportunities to practice those skills by simply asking for someone to tell them the answer. These are skills that develop over a programmers career. And when you have issues like getting a for loop going, or if you can have a for loop in a while loop, then reading the documentation is not going t…

I agree. Total beginners do deserve more patience and more explicit instruction. Novice and Intermediate programmers who have learned the basics and are looking to learn more are the ones who really need the practice in "learning how to find your own answer".

Re: Friction Between Programming Professionals and Beginners

#176

Post by cableshaft »

josephg wrote: post #98

Joel Spolsky gave a great talk a few years ago about the design of StackOverflow. Three groups of people are involved in every question on the site: the asker, the people who answer and the people who read the answer later. Which group do you think the site is optimised for? The answer is the third group. The average SO question gets read 30 times per day. Any value captured by either of the other groups is massively…

You're right. SO is optimized for people who read it later. I.e. people who will Google their problem, get directed to the question...and then want to throttle you for answering "Just google it."

Because they just did that.

And the next eight links on their google search also link to forums with people saying "RTFM", "Quit wasting our time", "This has been answered a bunch of times before.", or even worse, someone who clearly didn't bother to read the question and gives a blatantly wrong answer.

And then the answer they have been looking for is now buried in legions of programmers' impulsive expressions of indignation.

At the very least link to somewhere where it is properly answered, or don't answer at all.

Re: Friction Between Programming Professionals and Beginners

#177

Post by greenyoda »

AndyKelley wrote: post #156

I appreciate the discussion this article is bringing to the table, and I mostly agree with it. I'm going to pick on the one thing that I disagree with. The article said that professionals should not say: “why would you want to do that?” I think this question is quite possibly the best thing about asking for help in a programming community. What better way is there to learn about programming than the Socratic Method?…

Exactly. When I'm helping people solve problems, I find that "why would you want to do that" is one of the most useful questions to ask. The questions that people ask are very frequently about preconceived notions of what the solution to some problem should look like. If you ask about what the actual problem is that they're trying to solve, you might be able to suggest a much better or simpler solution, or inform them that the problem is solved already (e.g., there's a method in the API that does just what they're trying to do).

Re: Friction Between Programming Professionals and Beginners

#178

Post by uo999 »

krschultz wrote: post #91
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…

Yes, it is the answer I would give to a 12 year old girl. First off, why does your 12 year old have to be a girl? You are spouting off about diversity but you basically just used the stereotype that teenage girls are going to cry if you give them the hard truth. Why do we have to treat single mothers with kid gloves? Guess what, diving through some docs is a lot easier than anything a parent has to put up with. 3 of…

Why do you have to take offence at everything ? Have SJW and feminism corrupted our thinking so much so that we need thought policing every single time someone says Girl or Women ?

Tech world is better off without people like you.

Re: Friction Between Programming Professionals and Beginners

#179

Post by Piskvorrr »

ryandrake wrote: post #76
adekok wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You ask a complex question and they ask you why you're doing it. As someone on the other side of those questions, perhaps I can explain. Very often, people unfamiliar with a subject area ask questions about solutions, instead of asking about problems. They've done a bit of googling, and have a partial solution. But the solution doesn't work, so they ask "how can I fix this solution." To someone familiar with the pr…

Those "what are you really trying to do?" responses are infuriating. I feel like responding "What I'm really trying to do is just get an answer to this specific question. I don't need you to re-design my architecture."

Usually, the intent is not to infuriate you, but to get context. The problem may be crystal clear to you, but to a onlooker, it might be completely ambiguous.

Imagine asking "how do you say 'house' in German?" Well that depends: is that a verb meaning "accomodate"? Is that a noun? Does that mean "a building," as in "three-bedroom house"? Or "a dynasty," as in "house Stark?" Or music, as in "house music"? Or something completely different? https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/house

"I DONT CARE JUST ANSWER ME IS IT SO HARD?!!!!" Yes, yes it is.

Re: Friction Between Programming Professionals and Beginners

#180

Post by Piskvorrr »

collyw wrote: post #159
froh42 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I turn to google as well. That's what over 30 years of development experience give you: You know how to use google to turn up the correct answers. And as I use Java for a living - there's a great decompiler in my IDE. Use the source, Luke. By the way, showing a talented beginner where good documentation is - I think that's frequently the best way to help them along.

Most of the time Stack Overflow answers are top of my Google hits.

Google Search is an elegant tool of a more...civilized...age. A long time ago, it used to have more result pages than the first one. (Technically, it still has them - but nobody ever goes there: just click through the first page results, or try something else.)

In other words: just because Google ranks a result best doesn't actually mean it is best for you: I have frequently found the actual result I was looking for two or three result pages down.

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