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Friction Between Programming Professionals and Beginners

programmingforbeginnersbook.com

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Re: Friction Between Programming Professionals and Beginners

#41

Post by drinchev »

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.

You are right, although sometimes questions pass through the moderators and nothing happens.

[1] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16392260/which-websocket-... [2] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5062614/how-do-i-decide-w...

Re: Friction Between Programming Professionals and Beginners

#42

Post by gonehome »

crdoconnor wrote: post #11
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. How is that alienating?

In my experience it's not so much a genuine "let's take a step back and see if this is the right approach".

It's more of a condescending "Why are you even doing THAT" (because the person doesn't actually know the answer). You see this kind of problem in person too with people who feign surprise over you not knowing something when asking a question so they can act like they're much smarter, but they're really just insecure about what they know.

"You don't know what X is?!"

This is toxic, but in real life the best approach is to just reiterate you don't know and ask. This usually reveals the person claiming to be surprised doesn't actually know either (or if they do you can at least quickly learn something). This doesn't work as well with an online community though and people usually just leave it.

Re: Friction Between Programming Professionals and Beginners

#43

Post by nissehulth »

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.

Indeed. Quite often I google a problem and the first result is a StackOverflow link. But, there's no answer. Someone asked about the same problem and got shut down by mods for some silly reason. Now, if there are other search results that look like they could give me an answer, I simply avoid the SO links.

Re: Friction Between Programming Professionals and Beginners

#44

Post by unwind »

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…

Regarding grammar/typos on Stack Overflow, often I try to simply edit the question to fix it. That might be considered passive/aggressive, but I just want it to be pretty. :)

Re: Friction Between Programming Professionals and Beginners

#45

Post by Piskvorrr »

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.

Most of the community? [citation-needed]. Also, I severely doubt that SO === all teh internetz; the premise "if it's not immediately and precisely answered on SO, all hope is lost" is just absurd (and directly contradicts most of the article which sparked this discussion, btw).

Re: Friction Between Programming Professionals and Beginners

#46

Post by Mithaldu »

kough wrote: post #15
Mithaldu wrote: post #7

This article fails to notice the primary problem with people learning a programming language . Just as with a real language you learn the highest amount of material by absorbing explanations and expressions by qualified users of the language ; not by immediately trying to form sentences as soon as you know 5 words. A user of a language only becomed a skilled user when their mind contains a large enough corpus of abso…

I'm not sure your analogy between programming languages and spoken languages supports your point. Pretty sure the best way to learn a new language involves lots of time practicing speaking. The analogy would then support trying to program as much as possible in a new language, rather than just reading books about it. Not sure if this was supposed to be a joke; I thought it was fairly well established that it's common…

> Pretty sure the best way to learn a new language involves lots of time practicing speaking.

It isn't. It really isn't. :)

While it is a big part, and necessary if you actually want to talk to people, in terms of time spent it is much more important to get the vocabulary in and as much exposure to expressions of the language by competent users as possible.

That's why people recommend travelling to where a language one wants to learn is spoken; not because one must speak it there as well, but because one hears and reads it there everywhere.

Re: Friction Between Programming Professionals and Beginners

#47

Post by adekok »

AndrewUnmuted wrote: post #24

As a kid, it took me a long time to learn to program because I was constantly fighting the very things that this article brings up. You can chalk it up to youthful arrogance. When I dropped my attitude and realized how wrong I was (around age 17, when many kids finally do this) I finally became a good programmer. I tried for nearly five years as a kid, but my naievete got in the way. Programming requires a nearly dog…

I agree 100%. I run into this every day.

The people who give up their ego and follow methodology, logic, etc. get things done.

The people who have an attitude don't get things done. Even worse, they often accuse everyone else of being arrogant and unhelpful.

On the Open Source mailing list I administer, I've had to resort to banning these people. Ask a question? OK. Argue with the answer? Not OK. Tell the people who are helping you that they're assholes for saying you did something wrong? Ban.

Re: Friction Between Programming Professionals and Beginners

#48

Post by lukev »

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…

If you can provide links to the relevant portion of the documentation or a relevant google search result, I think that's fine. But merely telling someone "read the manual" without adding anything else serves no purpose whatsoever.

Re: Friction Between Programming Professionals and Beginners

#49

Post by thomasahle »

cballard wrote: post #16
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.

I asked a question on a Stack Exchange site (not SO) that was immediately reported as a duplicate. It wasn't , the duplicate wasn't even close in multiple ways, and someone else jumped in to defend the question - he was then upvoted by several people. Despite this, there is a permanent prompt to either accept that the question is a duplicate, or to edit my question and explain why it isn't. This is nonsensical, becau…

Did you try deleting it and asking it again, rewritten in a way that makes it totally clear why it isn't a duplicate?

Re: Friction Between Programming Professionals and Beginners

#50

Post by legulere »

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). Then you need to get an text editor. You're recommended to use the python repl, but it lacks syntax highlighting and autocompletion.

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