How to avoid humiliating newcomers: A guide for advanced developers • Hacker News Board

Re: How to avoid humiliating newcomers: A guide for advanced developers

#21

Post by maxxxxx » Fri, Mar 16, 2018, 6:56 PM UTC

strkek wrote: post #8

[09:00] Hi. [09:16] Hey, what's up. [09:23] I have a problem, do you have some time? [09:24] Sure, what's it about? [09:27] Have you worked with X thing before? I have to do Y thing but don't know how. [09:28] So, I just googled "how to do Y thing in X thing" and got this blog entry explaining in detail, and also this other Stack Overflow answer with a very similar problem. [09:29] Sec, gonna try that. [09:35] I got…

I have had plenty of dialogs like this with people who have no ability to look up something or, I often suspect, are too lazy. If this happens a more than a few times and it's clear they have no grasp of fundamentals ("I got this error "someVariable is not defined". What's it mean?") I send them a link with a tutorial or a book and tell them to read it.

Re: How to avoid humiliating newcomers: A guide for advanced developers

#22

Post by blub » Fri, Mar 16, 2018, 6:57 PM UTC

gnode wrote: post #4

I wonder if the underlying reason for this emotional response is guilt which goes hand-in-hand with altruism. In the case of the Santa and the homeless man, the Santa didn't want to give the man $5, but did so presumably out of guilt, then felt angry. In the case of the author getting angry about low-value questions, I wonder if that's because of a guilty feeling that they must answer. Personally, I can't really empa…

The author is completely missing the point of his own feelings: his unconscious mind is telling him to stop wasting time answering questions and do something more useful.

But of course, the conscious mind knows better, one must behave nicely, be zen, suppress their feelings, etc. And 10 years later you're visiting a psychologist to deal with your burn out.

Re: How to avoid humiliating newcomers: A guide for advanced developers

#23

Post by jstewartmobile » Fri, Mar 16, 2018, 6:58 PM UTC

adjkant wrote: post #17

jstewartmobile wrote: post #14

Most programmers are assholes because they are unhappy. Most programmers are unhappy because most software is terrible. Most software is terrible because most programmers are assholes.

I'd argue that most programmers are assholes for reasons far beyond software being terrible, and are unhappy for those other reasons, which is a much bigger conversation. The only reason I bring it up is that developers using software as an excuse to be assholes will only make the problem worse and is a cop-out for dealing with the actual issues.

Just going off the article. If improper capitalization of "Python" makes him have to take a deep breath and count to five, he's probably an asshole, and if that asshole just happens to be "one of the most senior programmers at MongoDB", then the universe makes sense today.

edit: What are the actual issues? I want to know. Change my mind.

Re: How to avoid humiliating newcomers: A guide for advanced developers

#24

Post by jamesgeck0 » Fri, Mar 16, 2018, 6:59 PM UTC

blub wrote: post #19

What a pretentious piece of writing, I can't stand this kind of goody two-shoes attitude. It's ok to be human and get upset every now and then. Heck, you might even take it out on someone. Apologise and move on, you don't have to become a buddhist and take the three breath vow - it's useless and unhealthy.

What is unhealthy about deciding to pause before responding harshly to someone?

Re: How to avoid humiliating newcomers: A guide for advanced developers

#25

Post by makecheck » Fri, Mar 16, 2018, 7:00 PM UTC

With many things in life, it’s good to assume other people are not in the same situation as you. Just because you have all day to work on something doesn’t mean that the whole Internet has all day to help you.

What percentage of your free time, for instance, will be spent compared to the percentage of free time of another person? And, what have you done to minimize time required: have you tried to succinctly describe your problem, have you Googled terms in advance, etc.?

Re: How to avoid humiliating newcomers: A guide for advanced developers

#26

Post by anonymousDan » Fri, Mar 16, 2018, 7:09 PM UTC

blub wrote: post #19

What a pretentious piece of writing, I can't stand this kind of goody two-shoes attitude. It's ok to be human and get upset every now and then. Heck, you might even take it out on someone. Apologise and move on, you don't have to become a buddhist and take the three breath vow - it's useless and unhealthy.

Totally agree, I actually thought his response was pretty funny. If people can't take a joke like that they need to lighten up/harden up a bit.

Re: How to avoid humiliating newcomers: A guide for advanced developers

#27

Post by commandlinefan » Fri, Mar 16, 2018, 7:14 PM UTC

cpburns2009 wrote: post #9

Those Stack Overflow answers are awfully contrived. In my experience answers like that are quickly down-voted and deleted by the community. That being said, if you ask how to parse HTML with regular expressions, or post some SQL with injection vulnerabilities, they'll be closed as duplicates.

Yeah, I believe him when he says it happens, but I've never encountered hostility on SO, and I've asked some really stupid questions (and in each case, I really ought to have known better and done my homework, so in my case I would have deserved a bit of condescension).

Re: How to avoid humiliating newcomers: A guide for advanced developers

#28

Post by commandlinefan » Fri, Mar 16, 2018, 7:22 PM UTC

strkek wrote: post #8

[09:00] Hi. [09:16] Hey, what's up. [09:23] I have a problem, do you have some time? [09:24] Sure, what's it about? [09:27] Have you worked with X thing before? I have to do Y thing but don't know how. [09:28] So, I just googled "how to do Y thing in X thing" and got this blog entry explaining in detail, and also this other Stack Overflow answer with a very similar problem. [09:29] Sec, gonna try that. [09:35] I got…

Yeah, I'm not sure if I'm going against the grain here, but I think it's more than reasonable to say, "you really need to spend some time reading through ". Even if they don't like it, and even if they end up not liking you, in many cases, that really is the best - and only - advice that will ever help.

Re: How to avoid humiliating newcomers: A guide for advanced developers

#29

Post by koala_man » Fri, Mar 16, 2018, 7:22 PM UTC

strkek wrote: post #8

[09:00] Hi. [09:16] Hey, what's up. [09:23] I have a problem, do you have some time? [09:24] Sure, what's it about? [09:27] Have you worked with X thing before? I have to do Y thing but don't know how. [09:28] So, I just googled "how to do Y thing in X thing" and got this blog entry explaining in detail, and also this other Stack Overflow answer with a very similar problem. [09:29] Sec, gonna try that. [09:35] I got…

I had this problem as well. The same trivial shell scripting problems came up over and over.

My solution was to write a static analysis tool (ShellCheck) that would recognize them automatically and with enough confidence would even auto-answer. It's gotten way more use than I ever expected.

Haven't made much progress on the plaintext question problem though. Some day!

Re: How to avoid humiliating newcomers: A guide for advanced developers

#30

Post by commandlinefan » Fri, Mar 16, 2018, 7:27 PM UTC

msla wrote: post #6

cosban wrote: post #3

I'm willing to admit that maybe I'm not the best at social interaction. I think this article is on point though. I am unable to count the number of times I've gone to some random project community for assistance dealing with whatever problem I was having at the time to be met with someone telling me that what I'm doing is insane and shouldn't be done in the first place. It's taught me that I should just use these out…

> I am unable to count the number of times I've gone to some random project community for assistance dealing with whatever problem I was having at the time to be met with someone telling me that what I'm doing is insane and shouldn't be done in the first place. There should be an explicit three-way breakdown for this: 1. You're having trouble because of a bug, either yours or ours. If it's yours, the helpful thing is…

Well, on the flip side - I've had similar experiences to cosban's, and it usually goes like this: I'm neck-deep in a complicated scenario, and I'm stuck and can't figure out what to do next. I can ask for help, but it will take pages of explanation just to describe how I got where I am. Recognizing that everybody's (myself included) attention span only goes so far, I try to describe just the problem I've run into in as few words as possible without going through the whole epic story. Then somebody comes along and says "what you're doing doesn't make any sense, you shouldn't be doing that"...