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Friction Between Programming Professionals and Beginners

programmingforbeginnersbook.com

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Re: Friction Between Programming Professionals and Beginners

#111

Post by gravypod »

Flimm wrote: post #105
gravypod wrote: post #93

I consider myself a fairly seasoned programmer. I have written countless lines of code, work on a few projects with friends, and automated most of my computer-related tasks. I've been doing this since I was 12, and I am 19 at the time of writing this. I can say with confidence, I have never been able to successfully ask a question on stack overflow. I think I have been banned at least once, or they deleted my account…

I have had a couple of my questions closed for reasons that I disagree with, so I can sympathise there, but to me it sounds incredible that someone would be banned just for asking programming questions. You say you think you've been banned, could you check and let us know what actually happened? Did you really get banned?

Yea it looks like I was banned and it looks like I was banned more then once. I have an @gmail email address, and one at a custom domain I use professionally.

I cant login to either.

It also seems like I am not the only one: https://np.reddit.com/r/learnprogramming/comments/1wpbhv/i_e...

That was linked in the article.

I spent that entire week upset because I felt I did something wrong (this was back when I was like 14, 2 years into programming and still very much an emotional edgy teen).

I'm very lucky that I eventually brought it up to a long time IRC friend and programming "mentor" of mine Steve who said that he was also banned. To me this was crazy as I could not understand how he could have been banned. He was, and still is, my last go-to resort for programming help; basically Mister Miyagi.

Because of this, I have surmised that to be good at programming, you need to be banned from SOF for asking a perfectly reasonable question.

Edit: I was banned when I asked for help with writing a 3D matrix camera with not problems from gimbal lock and another time for asking if there was a datatype for allowing two threads to mutate the same state.

Back then, I did not know about locking, concurrency, and all of the cool jazz. I learned most of what I know myself.

Thank god google indexes all of the closed SOF posts or I would have never been able to.

Re: Friction Between Programming Professionals and Beginners

#112

Post by jrs235 »

marknutter wrote: post #79
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…

> 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…

I would like to, as warmly as possible, point out the blind spot in your response. Why is the gender/sex of the person asking important? I think your response would be better as "would this be the answer you give to a 12 year old ... Or a single parent ... or one of your own parents?" Your response appears to insinuate that females are more delicate than males and unable to handle abrasiveness. That is all.

Re: Friction Between Programming Professionals and Beginners

#113

Post by doktrin »

tcfunk wrote: post #102
doktrin wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apply this perspective beyond software development. Law, medicine, firemen, teaching a kid to play baseball. Why do we continually look at software development different than other acquired skills? Well, that's a good question. What do you think it takes to break into law, medicine or fire safety? I can assure you that being willing to put in significant work, and tolerating adversity, is a hard requirement for eac…

While too much coddling is probably not helpful, neither is being overly abrasive because "back in my day that's how we learned it". Holding on to old teaching methods "just because" isn't the right answer, nor will it help the programming profession in the long run.

Are you addressing me, or just speaking in generalities?

Teaching and pedagogy is a broad topic, and there are certainly things that can be done to improve most existing models. However, a willingness to tolerate some modest level of adversity will remain necessary.

Re: Friction Between Programming Professionals and Beginners

#114

Post by agentgt »

Not that it justifies the behavior I'm curious if there are any disciplines of where there isn't friction between professionals and beginners. In academia I noticed a similar friction. I would imagine politics to be similar... sports... they won't even let you play if your not good.

Re: Friction Between Programming Professionals and Beginners

#115

Post by kbenson »

marknutter wrote: post #79
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…

> 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…

> 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 trying to switch careers to improve her lot in life? Or your own mother, for that matter? Is it really constructive to be so abrasive?

An important bit of context is implicit in both your comments, and I think the context is different, which is where some of the differences in your stances are.

It's very important to know the purpose of the asker when answering a question. If the little girl or a single mother are trying to accomplish a single thing, right now, and their purpose is not to learn, then yes, just answer the question or don't bother commenting. If their purpose seems to be to learn, then teaching them both skills on how to better teach themselves and on better ways to approach the problem are ultimately more useful.

Does it really help that single mother trying to switch careers more to be told how to fix her HTML parsing regex[1], or would she be better served with a suggestion on a library that provided a more sane way to accomplish that capability? Of course, as a community we could do better at being more civil, and providing both answers, but if ever there was a place where the "teach a man to fish" parable fit, this is it.

1: Not to start an inflammatory discussion on that. I regularly use regexen to parse well formed specific HTML pages. The trick is knowing where it's appropriate and where it's not.

Re: Friction Between Programming Professionals and Beginners

#116

Post by fabian2k »

gravypod wrote: post #111
Flimm wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have had a couple of my questions closed for reasons that I disagree with, so I can sympathise there, but to me it sounds incredible that someone would be banned just for asking programming questions. You say you think you've been banned, could you check and let us know what actually happened? Did you really get banned?

Yea it looks like I was banned and it looks like I was banned more then once. I have an @gmail email address, and one at a custom domain I use professionally. I cant login to either. It also seems like I am not the only one: https://np.reddit.com/r/learnprogramming/comments/1wpbhv/i_e... That was linked in the article. I spent that entire week upset because I felt I did something wrong (this was back when I was like…

If you had hit the automatic question block, you would still be able to log in. And if you were manually suspended by a moderator, you also would be able to login.

Account deletion is only used for spammers, sock puppets used for vote fraud and for persistent trolls.

You can get blocked on SO from asking questions if you ask too many heavily downvoted and/or closed questions without a lot of positive contributions, but accounts aren't deleted just because someone asks a few bad questions.

Re: Friction Between Programming Professionals and Beginners

#117

Post by superuser2 »

mhurron wrote: post #94
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…

> 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 trying to switch careers to improve her lot in life? Or your own mother, for that matter? Yes, yes, and yes. The best thing you can do for someone is show them their questions already have been answered because they have access to a massive, growing body of human knowledge. > Is it really c…

Saying "Google it" or "RTFM" isn't showing them anything, it's brushing them off. Unless you are talking about actually linking them to a page that contains the answer.

Re: Friction Between Programming Professionals and Beginners

#118

Post by alexchantavy »

The programming professional culture described in the article is a grown-up version of hacker culture seen in old newsgroups and IRC rooms. It's somewhat of a rite of passage for a beginner to first lurk in these communities and learn just enough to know how to ask the right questions to not get yelled at.

Re: Friction Between Programming Professionals and Beginners

#119

Post by Lawtonfogle »

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…

>No, just no. There is no point to any of all this search technology and this accumulated knowledge if no one uses it.

Is there a manual? Is it searchable? Is it up to date? Is it common knowledge or has it already been pointed out? Was it written for programmers or does it require business/domain knowledge to understand?

You could theoretically plop someone with the ability to read English in front of a computer with internet connection and they could learn just about anything out there, but a little guidance is going to massively improve their productivity.

The way we should handle this at work is when someone comes asking for a fish, go on a little fishing expedition. If they don't get the fish themselves, provide them one. Keep an eye open for the ones who are learning and the ones who don't care to learn and respond accordingly.

Outside of work it has to work a bit differently for a number of factors. You don't have nearly the obligation to help others work together, there are far more people, there is less direct communication. I'm not sure if there is a better rule that doesn't end up being abrasive.

Re: Friction Between Programming Professionals and Beginners

#120

Post by cblock811 »

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…

> No, just no.

This is exactly why I just learned as much as I could on me own. I'm inviting downvotes by saying this, but you're being a dick. That's the point of his blog post, don't be a dick. I definitely agree that new people should come in and.. read posting guidelines and be receptive to feedback. The problem is that if we want them to be receptive.. responding like this will not help

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