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Stack Overflow and Discouraging Beginners

sonyaellenmann.com

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Re: Stack Overflow and Discouraging Beginners

#31

Post by reitanqild »

droope wrote: post #28

Welcome to the programming community! People are generally kind and willing to help, but there is one caveat: there is frequently little patience for questions which you could have resolved yourself. With time you'll both learn to identify these and to write your questions in a way that it reflects that you've "done your research."

Problem is when you are stumped with some small detail you have missed.

I must admit I have come to the point were I unconsciously just don't ask questions on SO and instead try another hour on my own instead of even trying to ask.

Re: Stack Overflow and Discouraging Beginners

#32

Post by reitanqild »

edem wrote: post #24
niftich wrote: post #13

Just as the article observes, it's really ironic that many, many google searches for "how to do X in language Y" lead to questions on SO that are marked as [closed], 'not a good question', etc. Often, the accepted answer is a variation of RTFM, but sometimes with an inline code example. Also ironic is when the question asks for help in choosing between frameworks or libraries of comparable functionality and it gets m…

> What's a good question then? Read the FAQ and you will know.

I find that my definition of for instance "primarily opinion based" or "not constructive" differ by a wide margin from some people at SO.

So no, just reading the rules might not help everyone I'm afraid. This is more like case law than physics I'm afraid.

Re: Stack Overflow and Discouraging Beginners

#33

Post by danbruc »

msftie wrote: post #2

Amen. In my opinion, SO has become a very toxic and discouraging community to participate in. It's a shame.

This kind of cuts both ways. I stopped answering Stack Overflow questions because now there is such a huge amount of trivial questions that are easily answered reading manuals or tutorials that it became hard to find interesting questions to answer. There are certainly other factors at play like me getting more experienced and therefore what I consider interesting shifted, Stack Overflow already has answers to a huge amount of questions and so on. But I am pretty sure that the kind of questions asked objectively shifted quite a bit towards trivial questions.

Now it depends on what you think about what Stack Overflow is supposed to be. I personally think Stack Overflow should be focused on providing information that not already exists, I don't think it should try to replicate or link to every manual and tutorial out there. This stuff already exists and is hopefully actively maintained by the language and library developers, so what is the point of duplicating it? I think Stack Overflow should not be about teaching people how to code but help them to solve hard problems.

What constitutes a hard problem of course heavily depends on one's experience and abilities so the line is kind of arbitrary but I would say that if it is in a beginners tutorial or the manual, then it is not a hard problem. I certainly unterstand the desire to get problems solved within minutes but I also think that is not really a good thing. No matter how good and experienced a developer you are, you will come across problems that take hours and days to solve again and again. Reading ten pages of a manual should really not be considered an annoyance but a valuable skill.

Very often you will already have a rough idea of how you want to solve your problem and just look for some very specific information, but if you take the time to read about it you will often find that your initial solution is actually not that great and there is a different preferred way to do it. So if there is one advice I would give to beginners than it definitely is »Read the fucking manual!« and probably read it twice.

Re: Stack Overflow and Discouraging Beginners

#34

Post by Joeri »

Veedrac wrote: post #26

> Maybe the original asker and I should have done ctrl + f for r% — but that didn’t occur to me, so I assume it didn’t occur to them either. Great, so you've learnt something for next time. > Beginners need guidance. They’re dumb and they flail around and they get stuck on “easy” problems. That’s why resources like Learn Python the Hard Way and Stack Overflow exist in the first place. Sorry, but no. "Stack Overflow i…

Meh, I'm an experienced dev and no questions that I might consider posing would get past the filters, either for being too vague, too specific, asking for off-site resources or asking for opinions. To be honest I don't even know what a good SO question is anymore, and i have 8000+ rep.

You may believe the current rules and moderator brute squads work to keep the site clean, but from where i'm standing they work to make the site useless.

Re: Stack Overflow and Discouraging Beginners

#35

Post by laddng »

I have found that as a beginner programmer, one thing that is really important is to have patience and persistence. I have observed other beginners who want to rush to become a good programmer in X language and basically throw every question into Stack Overflow.

Slow down, learn how to read technical manuals, and in the long run you'll thank yourself as you go on to learn more complex languages by reading technical documentation with patience and persistence. Build that foundation of how to learn and things will pay off in the long run.

Re: Stack Overflow and Discouraging Beginners

#36

Post by jrumbut »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #23

I do generally agree that Stack Overflow as a community is too enthusiastic about closing down some questions. It's always particularly frustrating to Google for some weird error message and find a Stack Overflow discussion which has been killed off because the question was inappropriate :) But, that said… I'm not sure this is a particularly convincing example of this phenomenon. This is an example of something which…

I think the point the author is making is that what can be easily found in a language's docs is subject to the same learning curve as what can be easily done with the language. Skill in docs reading comes with skill in the practice and understanding the concepts of a technology.

Someone can make an honest and unsuccessful search for something that is blindingly obvious to another. If new users have difficulty using the documentation, that is sufficient proof that the documentation doesn't adequately serve new users (besides new users who magically know how to learn like experienced users) and that's where Q&A communities come in.

The rules say you have to do research and you have to show what you've tried to do. It doesn't specify a standard skill level you need to meet.

Re: Stack Overflow and Discouraging Beginners

#37

Post by mhurron »

reitanqild wrote: post #30
Veedrac wrote: post #26

> Maybe the original asker and I should have done ctrl + f for r% — but that didn’t occur to me, so I assume it didn’t occur to them either. Great, so you've learnt something for next time. > Beginners need guidance. They’re dumb and they flail around and they get stuck on “easy” problems. That’s why resources like Learn Python the Hard Way and Stack Overflow exist in the first place. Sorry, but no. "Stack Overflow i…

Then maybe just maybe add a rule that you must lurk before asking questions? When the site clearly looks like as a place for noobs to get questions answered for free then maybe don't complain that you get just that.

If they would search for the answer to their question, they would get it right now instead of waiting for someone to come in and answer the same question yet again.

If you are starting out with something new, someone has already had the same problem you are. Your question has already been asked and answered.

Re: Stack Overflow and Discouraging Beginners

#38

Post by Tyr42 »

reitanqild wrote: post #31
droope wrote: post #28

Welcome to the programming community! People are generally kind and willing to help, but there is one caveat: there is frequently little patience for questions which you could have resolved yourself. With time you'll both learn to identify these and to write your questions in a way that it reflects that you've "done your research."

Problem is when you are stumped with some small detail you have missed. I must admit I have come to the point were I unconsciously just don't ask questions on SO and instead try another hour on my own instead of even trying to ask.

I find that half the time I start typing up a question for SO I answer it myself.

I'll imagine someone trying to answer it, but asking if I checked site Y on the topic first, so I'll make sure to add "Site Y only says " to my question. Only once I have added proof that it's not a trivial mistake on my part would I actually post the question, but sometimes I find out what was causing the problem in the first place.

Or maybe I'll be trying to reduce the problem to a minimal C file and the invocation of gcc that causes the error. And in doing so I'll realize what's wrong.

So I don't think it's a bad thing to get people to go over the question a few times before asking, and try and make it as easy as possible to answer the question.

Re: Stack Overflow and Discouraging Beginners

#39

Post by keithnz »

SO is a bit of a culture shock from other places. Its not a forum, it's a little bit wikipedia ish. Having your question closed is not a hostile act, it's part of creating crowd sourced editing of content. Sometimes questions that could be good get closed, sometimes questions that are bad don't get closed ( at least for several years ). While you may wish it to be a little more friendly, its main goal is to provide high quality content especially for professional developers, and the thing is, it is very successful at doing that, so be careful to understand how it gets a lot of high quality content because a lot of other sites tried and failed to do the same thing. Be very careful to fit into the culture of SO, if you want to chat about problems, find a forum, go on gitter, or some other space. On SO, best thing you can do is edit the original question if its badly done and you care about the question. Make it better.

Re: Stack Overflow and Discouraging Beginners

#40

Post by colejohnson66 »

kylehotchkiss wrote: post #17
tomb_ wrote: post #4

>Beginners need guidance. They’re dumb and they flail around and they get stuck on “easy” problems. That’s why resources like Learn Python the Hard Way and Stack Overflow exist in the first place. No. There's a lot, A LOT of resources online for beginners. let the nerds run SO, it's perfect as it is for people who know what they are doing.

Maybe SO could better integrate this type of thing with results. Example: "Your question is simple but I know this great starter guide or Book on Amazon that can help you find your way".

Yet SO is filled with people asking "how to homework" or want something they can copy/paste into their program. I've seriously seen an OP ask why the answer's code didn't work because it used variable names not present in the OP's code. Yet there was no way to know what the original variables were called because the OP didn't provide any code.
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