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Stack Overflow and Discouraging Beginners

sonyaellenmann.com

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Re: Stack Overflow and Discouraging Beginners

#111

Post by kaustubh »

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…

One scenario you fail to address is, that programmers frequently switch between technology stacks. I am a fairly proficient programmer in C++, but a simpler question in javascript might trip me. If you'are a javscript ninja, it might look like a multiplication question to you, but I am sure there would be cases where you need help with something which you haven't been doing for years.

Re: Stack Overflow and Discouraging Beginners

#112

Post by [deleted] »

reitanqild wrote: post #78
weaksauce wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The about us statement clearly states that it's a place for developers to "Developers trust Stack Overflow to help solve coding problems..." and "...our products aim to enrich the lives of developers as they grow and mature in their careers." Pretty clear that it's for professional programmers and not beginners. I agree that it is a bit frustrating to google something and have the SO question marked as a duplicate of…

> Pretty clear that it's for professional programmers and not beginners. SO itself begs to differ: > Stack Overflow is for professional and enthusiast programmers, people who write code because they love it. So very clearly not only professionals. Also as lambda points out somewhere in this discussion you might be a seasoned pro in one language and a noob in another.

[deleted]

Re: Stack Overflow and Discouraging Beginners

#113

Post by ddebernardy »

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…

> 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 :)

I'm a bit torn on those, tbh. The answer to those types of questions (and many other low quality questions) are typically in a blog post or in the docs a couple of positions further down in Google search results. At the very least the latter will provide a few interesting leads and hints on what's wrong.

A user who asks such a question on SO directly, without as much as a reference to the latter, is basically sending the message that they can't be bothered to do their own research or thinking, and are de facto abusing the time of those who do. But they'll never learn the problem-solving skills that are so critical to being a good engineer.

Sure, a good samaritan could do the work, figure it out, learn something new in the process, and answer. Maybe they'll even answer it another few times for the feel-good factor. But at some point they'll get bored or irritated, and therein lies the rub.

(One could of course argue that some engineers lack the curiosity and the basic problem-solving abilities that are necessary to be a good engineer. But that is another problem altogether.)

Re: Stack Overflow and Discouraging Beginners

#114

Post by amag »

exolymph wrote: post #104
jrumbut wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your take on documentation, and I agree that there are some difficult concepts even in basic programming that you just have to work hard to learn. Reading dense documentation is a programming skill, so it doesn't seem ridiculously out of bounds to be still in the process of learning it when on a programming education site. What I'm trying to say is more along the lines of "if you don't have anything nice…

>Saying "oh hey try ctrl f on that documentation page you looked at" would be a valuable response, saying that asking the question is dumb isn't a positive contribution and is likely to make the asker defensive and unlikely to really learn from the experience. 100% — this is the point I was trying to make

I agree with the sentiment that being snarky doesn't help, but I think ddebernardy is correct when saying:

"Sure, a good samaritan could do the work, figure it out, learn something new in the process, and answer. Maybe they'll even answer it another few times for the feel-good factor. But at some point they'll get bored or irritated, and therein lies the rub."

Personally after having answered a lot of questions - in a nice, helpful way, mind you - questions whose answer could simply be "RTFM", these days I just avoid them. The problem with these kinds of questions are that more and more they offer nothing to the person answering them. A lot of them are asked by people who created an account on SO just to ask that question and then throws away the key (to that account). So don't expect to get any feedback, whether karma, comments or to be marked accepted. Don't expect there to be an interesting discussion with other devs with different experiences. I mean, I was answering questions on forums long before there was any karma involved just because I like to help/teach, but for that to be interesting to me who answers questions, there must be some sort of feedback. Karma is one way but I always preferred the good ol' discussion. It means I get to learn something as well. Questions answerable with "RTFM" offer very little of that.

I guess what I'm saying is that people who answers question on SO (or similar sites) are not getting paid to answers those questions. They do it for fun, learning experience, karma, status or whatever. So there has to be something in it for them as well.

Re: Stack Overflow and Discouraging Beginners

#115

Post by ramblerman »

hackuser wrote: post #76
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."

> there is frequently little patience for questions which you could have resolved yourself. I don't think that's realistic; it's the rationalization for bad behavior. IMHO the truth often is that there are many people who want the chance to act out on their frustrations or other emotional problems, and they seek a target they can rationalize attacking - like a guy going to a bar looking for a fight. Or like the angry…

There may be some like that, but they are not a majority. I love educating new programmers, but the concept of "Give a man a fish, teach a man to fish..." really does apply.

If you have a habit of giving up your search after 1 minute and expecting help you will not make it far as a programmer/problem solver.

Re: Stack Overflow and Discouraging Beginners

#116

Post by doug1001 »

so my rep on SO is about 41K with an average rep per answer a little shy of 100 and about every third answer is the accepted answer. My numbers on Cross Validated (the SO for "data scientists") are significantly better.

but i've given up trying to ask a question on any of the SO Sites. As far as i can tell, most questions on SO et al are closed for violating one of two boundary conditions. At one end: don't ask a question whose answer is subjective. And at the other end: don't ask a question that can be answered directly from the docs (or google).

when you look over a few dozen or more questions closed on these grounds, it's clear to me that this window--the space between these two boundaries that represents an acceptable question is very very small. It's so small that the last couple of questions i've posted i've missed--aimed either too high or too low.

Re: Stack Overflow and Discouraging Beginners

#117

Post by reitanqild »

reitanqild wrote: post #64
sklivvz1971 wrote: post #49

Disclaimer: I code for Stack Overflow and before that I was a mod. Many of these comments lack a sense of proportions regarding Stack Overflow. We get 8,000 questions... per day. There are more than 30 million posts, 12 millions of which are questions. Yeah, we have to close a lot of them, and we keep the ones which we can answer. Lists are disallowed for a reason. Opinions are disallowed for a reason. We aim to buil…

> Many of these comments lack a sense of proportions regarding Stack Overflow. We get 8,000 questions... per day. Then again you seem to enjoy it; your whole site seems like a big funnel to attract questions. If you feel you get too many homework or beginner questions I have mentioned here and elsewhere I think some ideas to reduce the workload while minimally impacting target users. To be blunt: IMO SO at the moment…

Correction: it is of course not all about raking up numbers, -lots of questions are answered. Still it feels weird to talk about the workload without adjusting the threshold for asking.

Re: Stack Overflow and Discouraging Beginners

#118

Post by piva00 »

mhurron wrote: post #37
reitanqild wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Most of the beginner's problem is: how should I phrase this question I have?

Instead of searching for specific jargon they don't know about they'll come up with their own terms to try to explain their problem.

This is another acquired skill, nowadays to be a good programmer you need to learn how to search for documentation and how to phrase it and to learn that you need to become a programmer and be in contact with the technical jargon.

I don't know another way to overcome this except for experience, what is exactly what newbies don't have so I try not to bash them but educate in how they can find the stuff they want.

Re: Stack Overflow and Discouraging Beginners

#119

Post by jrumbut »

amag wrote: post #114
exolymph wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Saying "oh hey try ctrl f on that documentation page you looked at" would be a valuable response, saying that asking the question is dumb isn't a positive contribution and is likely to make the asker defensive and unlikely to really learn from the experience. 100% — this is the point I was trying to make

I agree with the sentiment that being snarky doesn't help, but I think ddebernardy is correct when saying: "Sure, a good samaritan could do the work, figure it out, learn something new in the process, and answer. Maybe they'll even answer it another few times for the feel-good factor. But at some point they'll get bored or irritated, and therein lies the rub." Personally after having answered a lot of questions - in…

I like your approach, just move on if it's not what you want to do. That should be the general rule, and I think that's what most people do.

The other benefit is that it leaves the door open to new participants, who are excited enough to know something that they don't mind not getting the upvote. Online communication is one of the most important skills to have, and every skill takes practice.

Re: Stack Overflow and Discouraging Beginners

#120

Post by mlvljr »

lambda wrote: post #67
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…

I'm a user with 150k rep on SO. I'm not a casual user. However, I have been discouraged from using the site in recent years due to too many disagreements over closing and downvoting questions when actually just getting a little bit more clarification from the person asking the question would have helped a lot more. I've answered over 1,000 questions, ranging from very simple beginner level to some things that took a…

I actually had a tehcodez.stackexchange proposal on Area51 (for funny / informal questions, not fitting SO itself)

Was shot down rather soon, of course (not without upvotes, though) :)

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