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Friction Between Programming Professionals and Beginners

programmingforbeginnersbook.com

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Re: Friction Between Programming Professionals and Beginners

#181

Post by Piskvorrr »

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…

Seriously? Most IDEs do precisely that, and compilers do explain them. Eeeeexcept...their explanations are called "warnings," and ignored as such.

Re: Friction Between Programming Professionals and Beginners

#182

Post by Piskvorrr »

ctstover wrote: post #68

1. Sounds like a market opportunity for a beginner oriented forum, that somehow incentivizes experts to help constructively. 2. The number one sign an expert is an impostor is the way the play the role of a teacher and student. 3. The main thing I hate about SO is the illogical ban on questions that recommend something. At least 80% of my searches that land on a SO page are like, "this is blacklisted by some troll ma…

SO was never supposed to be a site for Eeeeeeeverything And A Kitchen Sink. "Cool and interesting things outside the box" is pretty much Reddit's tagline.

Re: Friction Between Programming Professionals and Beginners

#183

Post by Piskvorrr »

diezge wrote: post #27

The problem is a lot of people misinterpret what StackOverflow is supposed to be - a repository of programming-related questions/answers that are useful to more than one person. Most questions asked these days are duplicates, syntax errors or are answered in the relevant online documentation - I really think there should be online courses on 'How to find the right thing to search for' because it would help newbies so…

Already done, and it's apparently RFC 1925 §6 - turtles all the way down. Now the problem is one level down the stack (pun not intended), with "newbies won't read http://stackoverflow.com/help/how-to-ask and get offended when prompted" instead of "newbies don't know how to ask and get offended when prompted".

Re: Friction Between Programming Professionals and Beginners

#184

Post by Chris2048 »

Piskvorrr wrote: post #179
ryandrake wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 somethi…

There used to be a python IRC room were they would not only refuse to help you if they considered your methods "unpythonic", but they actually encouraged anyone else not to help as well. They ask you what you intended to do in order to police if they should help or not.

The answer in the above case is: "There are many different meanings of the word 'house' in translation (e.g accomodation, a building) so it depends on context."

You could then elaborate on different meanings, or suggest the question be made more specific; This is a question that requires more context; however, it's not the same as the procedural questions that often feature on SO where there is no ambiguity in the language.

Re: Friction Between Programming Professionals and Beginners

#185

Post by Chris2048 »

adekok wrote: post #36
nv-vn wrote: post #3

I can definitely recall how alienating the stack overflow community was to me when I first started learning programming. You ask a simple question and they yell at you to Google it. You ask a complex question and they ask you why you're doing it. My solution was just to close myself off from StackOverflow and try any other community. My experience with IRC hasn't been great, but often my responses were miles better t…

> 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…

Unless the question is missing important context, it should be answered; or to say it another way, anwerers shouldn't be concerned with if it's the right question, only that the question is clear.

If someone asks the wrong question, they might get the right answer, that doesn't help them. That's not a problem. That might be the right answer for someone else - no answer is just for the original submitter, but for anyone else to whom it is relevant.

The problem I've found is I've asked a very targeted question, and rather than answer it (or not, in the case that someone doesn't know the answer) people imply it's missing the context of what it's for - it doesn't matter, that would be a different question!

It seems sometimes people ask "what are you trying to solve" (in the guise of "helping newbies who ask the wrong questions") hoping it will turn out to be an easier question.

I'll also note, even if the question is the "wrong" way, those are the best ways to clarify how to do, since they'll be done on only rare occasions, and hence have less documentation.

Re: Friction Between Programming Professionals and Beginners

#186

Post by Piskvorrr »

teach wrote: post #143
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.

Sure, it's a very hard problem to solve. It's much easier to warn against 80% of potential errors - the algorithm isn't "smart" enough to fix them, but is smart enough to give the developer a push.

Re: Friction Between Programming Professionals and Beginners

#187

Post by froh42 »

splintercell wrote: post #12
froh42 wrote: post #4

I feel StackOverflow is a bad place even as a professional. I don't agree with 90% of "closing" of questions, frequently closing a question is the ultimate upvote. StackOverflow seems to prefer questions that can be answered by just copying the fine manual - and frowns on those that might involve discussion. From time to time I still use it, but for me it has jumped the shark.

Same here. I feel like StackOverflow after nearly 10 years of closing questions such as 'Which is a better framework X or Y', should be honored at /r/DesirePath. Like at which point do they understand that maybe their desire conflicts with how most community wants to use SO as.

With a stackoverflow-like system (rating, moderation, editing of questions by moderators, accepted answer) even such questions would be productive. Subjective ramblings would be voted away, answers showing advantages/disadvantages or similiarities between between frameworks would be rated up.

It's just stupid to reduce such a portal to only questions that can be answered by RTFM.

Questions that need discussion due to missing information should be voted away, I agree on that. But some allow subjective answers - and those are frequently those that require experience. (What's the best way to solve this-and-that? It depends, in situation a use solution A because, in situation b use solution B because, ...) Such questions typically are being closed by the moderators as well. And frequently the person who asks is not aware of all the factors influencing a solution, so there's a lot of useful information in such questions.

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