<story><title>Friction Between Programming Professionals and Beginners</title><url>http://www.programmingforbeginnersbook.com/blog/friction_between_programming_professionals_and_beginners/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mhurron</author><text>&amp;gt; Attempt to answer the question, or don’t comment at all.
Don’t tell them to RTFM, Google it,&lt;p&gt;No, just no. There is no point to any of all this search technology and this accumulated knowledge if no one uses it.&lt;p&gt;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 technical position is finding answers to questions you have that have already been answered. The next important skill they have to learn is doing a little bit of your own research in understanding your problem.&lt;p&gt;This goes especially for places like StackOverflow which is not a discussion forum. It&amp;#x27;s value is diminished by asking and answering the same questions over and over.&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I&amp;#x27;ll mention the last part of the statement I quoted too, it&amp;#x27;s unfortunate the lumped the second half of the statement with the first.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; correct their grammar, or give your opinions about their choice of technology&lt;p&gt;Correcting grammar is not helpful in any way in this context. If you can&amp;#x27;t understand what they&amp;#x27;re getting at, ask for clarification. Nitpicking grammar is just being a dick.&lt;p&gt;Opinions about what they&amp;#x27;re using may have one very narrow use, if what they&amp;#x27;re using to do what they&amp;#x27;re trying to do is just so very wrong. And we&amp;#x27;re talking &amp;#x27;I&amp;#x27;m trying to create a pure HTML page to run this Nuclear reactor&amp;#x27; levels of wrong. Most of the time, you do need to keep it to yourself. Especially on sites like StackOverflow, which is not a discussion board.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>marknutter</author><text>&amp;gt; No, just no. There is no point to any of all this search technology and this accumulated knowledge if no one uses it.&lt;p&gt;And here we have a prime example of why beginners find the programming community to be so abrasive, and worse, it&amp;#x27;s sitting at the top of this comment thread.&lt;p&gt;Ask yourself, would this be the answer you give to a 12 year old girl who&amp;#x27;s taken an early interest in programming? Or a single mother who&amp;#x27;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?&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m starting to understand why we have such a problem with diversity in our field. This type of response is, in no uncertain terms, the response of a bully.&lt;p&gt;Pause for a moment. Try to remember what it was like when you were first starting out with programming. When &amp;quot;the fucking manual&amp;quot; was actually really confusing and loaded with domain specific terms,  acronyms, and syntax. Can&amp;#x27;t remember a time when you didn&amp;#x27;t learn something immediately? Fine, step outside your world of programming and try to recall any painful memories you might have about trying to learn something outside your area of expertise.&lt;p&gt;Ever go to a gym and ask someone how to do a basic lift only to be scoffed at? Ever been to a foreign country and have someone berate you for not understanding how to navigate through some strange process or not knowing how to speak their language well enough? Perhaps you have, and it hurt, but you brushed it off and continued on. That&amp;#x27;s great for you, but not everybody is like that. A lot of people get discouraged and never continue with that sport, or with traveling, or with programming, and it&amp;#x27;s tragic because they might have otherwise excelled at those endeavors.</text></comment>
<story><title>Friction Between Programming Professionals and Beginners</title><url>http://www.programmingforbeginnersbook.com/blog/friction_between_programming_professionals_and_beginners/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mhurron</author><text>&amp;gt; Attempt to answer the question, or don’t comment at all.
Don’t tell them to RTFM, Google it,&lt;p&gt;No, just no. There is no point to any of all this search technology and this accumulated knowledge if no one uses it.&lt;p&gt;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 technical position is finding answers to questions you have that have already been answered. The next important skill they have to learn is doing a little bit of your own research in understanding your problem.&lt;p&gt;This goes especially for places like StackOverflow which is not a discussion forum. It&amp;#x27;s value is diminished by asking and answering the same questions over and over.&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I&amp;#x27;ll mention the last part of the statement I quoted too, it&amp;#x27;s unfortunate the lumped the second half of the statement with the first.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; correct their grammar, or give your opinions about their choice of technology&lt;p&gt;Correcting grammar is not helpful in any way in this context. If you can&amp;#x27;t understand what they&amp;#x27;re getting at, ask for clarification. Nitpicking grammar is just being a dick.&lt;p&gt;Opinions about what they&amp;#x27;re using may have one very narrow use, if what they&amp;#x27;re using to do what they&amp;#x27;re trying to do is just so very wrong. And we&amp;#x27;re talking &amp;#x27;I&amp;#x27;m trying to create a pure HTML page to run this Nuclear reactor&amp;#x27; levels of wrong. Most of the time, you do need to keep it to yourself. Especially on sites like StackOverflow, which is not a discussion board.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hellofunk</author><text>I would say that the real help lies in between. You don&amp;#x27;t go out of your way to explain something that is explained somewhere else already. But, you can go out of your way to show the person where it is explained or even what to search for. Researching a problem on the internet is a skill that needs to be learned; a meta-skill, if you will. Whenever a developer has told me in the past to RTFM, aside from the rudeness of this abbreviation, it really is no help. If they gently said, &amp;quot;the API docs for the UIViewController class, which are located &amp;lt;here&amp;gt;, shows the function in question, and how it is used.&amp;quot; etc.</text></comment>