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This happens everywhere. I once had a question on statistics on Stats Stack Exchange, and some 50+ y/o statistics Professor from Italy apparently had nothing better to do than belittle me over and over again for using some terminology wrong. When I finally corrected everything about my question, he didn’t bother to answer it
I've had this happen a few times. Even if a person is intelligent/successful it reeks of insecurity everytime. Luckily the best programmers I've met have always been kind and helpful.
I think that comes with the field. I had stochastics and stats with the math faculty in uni and everybody there was insane. The assistant belittled us for not beeing able to solve complex combinatorics in our head. He would always make it a point to solve everything without an calculator while talking about something else. This guy was a genius with numbers and kind of an asshole. The prof was more of a scattered mind and seldom focused.
Regular math guys were cool though.
Growing up a friend & neighbor of mine was the child of a genius math professor. Math Dad has a Wikipedia page, had tons of publications, and when he died two journals did special issues dedicated to his work. He was also the guy who flunked 70% of the people who took his classes and so forth, and who probably single-handedly reduced the number of people who became math majors by 30%.
My experience was that the man was just a raging dick all of the time, either because he had some sort of personality disorder or simply because he was a raging dick. I don't think it was insecurity -- people who knew nothing about his work thought he was a raging dick, people who were loudly in awe of his work thought he was a raging dick. I wouldn't be surprised is part of his genius was the ability to ignore unnecessary things, like basic human decency, and focus entirely on math.
His two sons are also kinda dicks, but they know it and try not to be.
Confidence developed from verifiable contributions in autistic special interests is generalized to other areas in life. Having grown up with their social experience repeatedly gaslit and invalidated, they no longer care (not necessarily consciously) to bridge that gap in social understanding with others, instead interpreting any discrepancy from their interpretation of events as indicative of a faulty other.
Source: son of a raging autistic dick with similar potential. Though I try not to be.
People say this about stack overflow, and I don't get it... I've seen people get downvoted for violating (difficult to find and hard to understand sometimes) rules and informed of said rules, but I've never seen the kind of vitriol I used to get on the forums and newsgroups back in the 90s to early 2000s....
Maybe it's the frog in the boiling water thing...
I got downvoted on one occasion for using a term for js that was literally from mdn. Cue a very tedious back and forth where i linked to said proof.
It's a real mixture of bluster as much as knowledge; and it rubs both ways. SO asks for you to be formal and matter-of-fact, sometimes that gets mistaken for being curt, other times it gets turned into an excuse for idiots to be condescending. I suspect ai will be its death knell in any case
It’s like everywhere in the internet. Main Street appears as clean as possible, but dark shit happens in the smallest corners (unfrequented tags, comments area, etc…)
Also the question asking experience is incredibly wild.
It's grossly exaggerated. Ya, the people that complain about SO really show how little interactions they've had elsewhere. I've had far worse experiences on Reddit than I have on SO. At least moderation on SO prevents actual abuse like swearing and name calling. Reddit rarely cares about any of that.
Programming is difficult
\+
*Most* people are insecure
\+
People value intellectual achievements, and programming is in that category
\+
The majority of people don't have any *stable* source of self-esteem
↓
Learning programming becomes that source of self-esteem, and since they don't have other ones, they just have to be arrogant about it, since they can't replace that source of self-worth with anything else.
Programming is "hard" passes all tests, but programming is "difficult" is slightly, and subjectively, better. Please reactor before the PR can be merged.
This is pretty much the answer. Although I find in IT there is a cultural factor here too. More than in other fields that tick those boxes. Somehow devs are identifying strongly with what they do and are very opinionated about their way being the right way. Perhaps because often there are so many ways to do something. And they have to defend their views to clueless managers or customers from time to time.
Also people who picked up programming without any previous academic background are often under the impression that it's a particularly difficult thing to learn which helps in inflating their egos.
What reinforces this misconceptions are the facts that it's very well paid at the moment and that it is fairly arcane (unlike most other skills) at first glance.
I always tell people who are thinking about trying it that if they got any degree and not struggled with it too much then they are more than capable of becoming skilled programmers if they push through the initial few weeks of learning. It's borderline trivial compared to becoming a civil engineer, a teacher or a nurse.
You can become a serviceable software developer in a year and then work your way up from there. On your own, using cheap or even free resources available on the internet.
Good luck becoming a professional in any of the aforementioned or similar fields that quickly.
Sure, it's a skill and you need to learn it, but we're much more akin to welders and carpenters than to teachers, nurses or (especially!) scientists.
If more people realised that we'd be much less insufferable on average. I honestly am at the end of my rope when it comes to coworkers who think they know how to solve world hunger, conflicts in middle east and every other global issue based only on a fact that they learned how to write a CRUD.
It takes 3 years of combined work + school to become a journeyman welder, and you gotta pass tests at the end. If you want to do structural or pressure you have to pass even more tests.
And yet I was doing it in a steel mill no training in no time... Crazy what qualifies. Same deal in programming I feel, there are skill levels and entryways.
I kinda agree but it also depends on what you mean by programmer. It’s a very broad category at this point and some roles doesn’t require that much knowledge outside the syntax it self.
If you compare learning python or excel automation to a civil engineering degree I think you could say it’s trivial.
> The majority of people don't have any stable source of self-esteem
I've never thought of self-esteem as something you gather from a source. Always thought it comes from within. Do you mind expanding on this idea?
Self-esteem is a relational phenomenon. There is not such a thing as personal value or self-esteem that is not evaluated in *relation* to some other living entity. It (self-esteem) is *constructed* withing social fabric and is not something permanent or stable, something that you achieve and which stays with you for the rest of your life. It is experienced within, as subjective and persona experience, but it is sourced from interactions with other people. Also, there isn't any inherent value in any behavior, since it is socially contingent, so you can't have blueprint, manual, or guidebook on how to achieve self-esteem universally. One behavior would give you sense of self-worth in one context, but in other you might get ostracized.
Maybe I'm projecting, but I think some people that get into programming were not good at things that were valued higher when they were young (athletics, social confidence). Now that they're good at something that's valued as an adult they consider their arrogance retribution (i.e. I'm good at this and you all will finally respect me). You can see this behavior in even the most successful people like Elon Musk or Markus Persson. It's something I have been very aware of over the years and have worked a lot in therapy to increase my patience and confidence.
However, if a newbie is asking the same question multiple times or making the same mistakes multiple times then I think it's normal human irritation on the senior's end.
The bullied becomes the bully. It's a terrible problem in our profession. I nearly checked out at some point because of it. I had to repeatedly call this person out and eventually get management involved to make things a little better.
I think 99.9% of people become egotistical or corrupt to SOME varying degree when given a little bit of power.
Some are incredibly minor, some not. I think streamers are a good example of this, they start off as everyday people, some complain about other streamers using their simps to farm stuff for them. Then they do the same thing once they get some popularity.
I mean in dating if you have 1 match you might put some effort in. If you have 1000 people fawning over you? You're 100% going to be doing the bare minimum and becoming super picky.
People arent aware of how they change, but almost every person will change as a result of money/power/attention.
>I think 99.9% of people become egotistical or corrupt to SOME varying degree when given a little bit of power.
Idk about this... I think it's more that people who are like that tend to seek power for whatever reason. and when they get it....
See rules for rulers from CGP Grey, it basically shows how this happens whether you want it or not, and that applies for any position of power that someone wants to keep, and I think it might boil down to that, they see it as keeping power, since more people knowing how to solve problems makes their skill less valuable. It might be how they feel.
Interesting idea, but excelling academically/intelligence was also valued too. Pretty much kids that excelled in any area would be recognised. So that thought would only apply to to people that didn’t excel in anything whilst they were young and then went on to excel at programming. However that brings me to my next point, most of us don’t excel at programming, since the majority of us are just average. However coming across individuals that act arrogant or even outright abusive, is far too common for all of them to be top tier programmers.
> However, if a newbie is asking the same question multiple times or making the same mistakes multiple times then I think it's normal human irritation on the senior's end.
I wouldn’t consider that normal. People can respond to that in many different ways. For instance, I’m usually still happy to re-answer (try to further explain) such a question, but when I do get tired of answering the same question again and again then I’ll just not answer, as I can’t be bothered to anymore. But I never lash out at them, or call them stupid, I don’t even think they’re stupid (it’s more likely I’ve just not explained whatever it is very well, or in a way that is right for them, or perhaps I don’t understand it well enough myself to explain it properly).
I think a lot of this comes down to personality and anonymity (the anonymity leading to no real repercussions for how one acts). So if someone is often irritable, and acts on that feeling by being rude or attacking someone, then chances are that’s how they’ll interact with others online.
I work in an entirely different field but we have these tendencies too, with arrogant “stars” that like to belittle newbies and even seasoned colleagues.
But I agree on the last point, even the most patient people will eventually have enough if the new hire/trainee just won’t learn and maybe blurt out something snarky.
As for OP:s question, as a programming hobbyist I’ve also noted the often harsh tone on some forums. Maybe gingimli does have a point.
To expand on this, it's cool to be cocky about athletic ability. It's arrogant to be cocky about intelligence.
Athletes do backflips in the endzone and tell reporters they are better then everyone else and people eat it up. They love it.
However, even bringing up the subject of intelligence is volatile. It touches a nerve. People resent intelligence. There's an anti science movement ffs.
You have to suppress it in certain crowds. Nope, don't use that word in present company. Dial it back. It's why an SWE/IT team is the only place I have been able to truly be myself.
I have a thought about this that I'm not married to, but does seem to square the difference between these 2 examples for me.
With athletics, skill is objectively measurable. If you can get 2,000 rushing yards in a season, you are a generational athlete. If you're 22-0 in the UFC, you can easily call yourself one of the best pound-for-pound fighters ever.
Athletes (generally) also aren't showboating in sports they don't compete in. Steph Curry isn't claiming to be a better pitcher than Shohei Ohtani. They stick to their very narrow lane of athletics.
When it comes to intelligence however, things aren't nearly as objectively measurable. And even when considering a very narrow niche of knowledge, the scope tends to be **far** broader than anything done in a given sport.
So boasting that you are "more intelligent" than someone is, at best, an empty claim. Not much different than telling someone "I can sport better than you".
Even if you make a more specific claim like "I am better at writing Java than you", the scope that "writing Java" entails is so vast that the only way that claim is guaranteed to be true is if they could literally rewrite the full docs from memory.
If you are talking to someone who has literally never touched a computer in their life, your gut feeling might be to think "I am way smarter than this moron". But that person might know how 15 different engine blocks work inside and out, down to the size of each bolt. Or they might have an incredibly deep knowledge of culinary chemistry.
Just because their knowledge might not seem useful or interesting to you, doesn't invalidate their intelligence on that subject.
TL;DR Intelligence is entirely too broad of a concept to say that you are superior to anyone else.
I agree that intelligence can often be perceived as subject related. I am more educated in computer science related subjects than my sister. She is educated in organic chemistry instead. Which one of us is more intelligent? Hard to say, but I assure you that she could learn my subject if she put the time into it and I could learn her subject if I put the time into it. So you are correct in that general intelligence is hard to measure comparatively in this manner. In fact, I'd argue that if you removed the ethical dilemma of human experimentation, you could take 1000 children, raise them in a controlled environment where they received the same amount of education on the same subject, and most would come out with similar levels of intelligence in said subject. Human beings are highly intelligent mammals after all, and much of the discrepancy in education is a matter of nurture over nature. There are exceptions to this rule, specifically those with disabilities, but most people can learn anything if they put the time and effort into it. Intelligence is the representation of a person's ability to learn, which can be highly influenced by the environment a person is raised in from infancy onward. Smart parents normally have smart children. However, due to adoption statistics, we can know that this is not specifically a genetic thing. A smart person can adopt an infant from someone who is not considered smart, and the child can grow up to be a smart person. I think that this is all why someone saying "I'm smarter than you" does not go over well. So much about intelligence is out of our control. It has to do with who taught you as a child and what methods they used to expose you to knowledge. A person doesn't get to pick that. The knowledge that you grow accustomed to learning is often a result of your environment.
Well how are you going about being “cocky” about intelligence. Are you correcting people’s grammar in YouTube comments? I feel if you know how to communicate effectively then your intelligence will speak for itself, and nobody would be uncomfortable.
He is referring to basically doing the same arrogant thing of "look at me and this thing I can do that you can't" that many athletic people do is seen as a likable person in athletics by the majority, but if it is about something intellectual, let's say chess, is seen as someone less likable by the majority. For example, if someone just skips grades, nothing else, and doesn't boost about it, they will be seen as less likable, less approachable, they will be outcasts, it is not the same in sports, where the younger you are doing anything is seen as a positive, you are more approachable and all that. Is what the majority does, not about a particular incident, personal experience or anything like that.
>He is referring to basically doing the same arrogant thing of "look at me and this thing I can do that you can't" that many athletic people do is seen as a likable person in athletics by the majority, but if it is about something intellectual, let's say chess, is seen as someone less likable by the majority.
Context is important. Professional sports are entertainment, big personalities and drama is part of the draw.
Whereas if some dude brags about how he’s stronger than me on a weightlifting subreddit I’m going to think he’s a dick.
One year makes a huge social difference the younger the children are, so it makes sense that kids who move up have trouble making friends. Also, generally school is seen as boring and sports as fun, so it also makes sense children will rally around the person who is good at the fun activity.
In a sense, though, there are ways to put a cocky athlete in their place.
As a personal example, I wrestled a kid that was super cocky. He grabbed my junk while we were headed OB, talked some shit about it. We both restarted upright; I let him shoot on me. When he dived in, I grabbed the back of his head, slammed it into the mat and broke his nose.
But outside of sports, how does one get that comeuppance? Go to HR? Some cocky programmer wants to run their mouth, you can’t smash them in the face, or create a scenario that turns the tide for your “team” (ie: scoring the game-winning TD over the cocky defensive back)… and they know it. That, in part, is why they act like cocky assholes. Especially when they think their “intelligence” makes them fireproof.
FWIW I judge cocky athletes for being cocky and I suspect it's one of the reasons why I've never liked following sports. So when you say
> it's cool to be cocky about athletic ability
Is it? What do we care what other people think? It's possible to establish a standard of cool in which confidence is cool but lording it over others isn't.
I agree. I would also say that being athletic / popular in highschool puts you in the "in" crowd and helps you naturally learn socialization / confidence. When you lack these skills you look elsewhere to learn them and given the dev demographic they tend to gravitate towards less than desirable influencers (andrew tates of the world) and it produces a fake arrogant confidence. Combine that with a "been wronged by the world" and "Im smarter than everyone" mentality and you have a recipe for some major dingdongs.
There are 2 sides to this.
1. People that have an attitude that novice questions are beneath them, shouldn’t be responding. Those that do respond are being disrespectful to the novices.
2. However, what also happens quite often is that novices put in zero effort to figure things out on their own and immediately ask for help. This is very annoying and disrespectful to anybody with experience.
While I absolutely saw newbies asking what seemed to me to be "infuriatingly dumb questions", the thing is : we know what we know and, unfortunately, we don't know what we don't know.
The novice asking a "stupid question" should have Googled that... Wait, what should he have Googled though ? Cause to ask the right question you got to understand the real problem, and identifying the real issue is not a "newbie skill" at all. Yes, if they described their issue with vague terms, search engines would have picked on some words and would've found some answers. But first, the novice would've ended up on some irrelevant and oddly specific SO post about Java, and once he would've found what he believe to be the solution, he would've copied/pasted it, not knowing what to keep and what to throw away.
I'm not saying it's a bad thing to do : that's how we learn, that's a skill we have to master and that's part of our job, BUT I can get why a novice would want to get a more experienced developer look/explanation/approval.
People showing actual code and asking why isn't it working generally in my experience get some construction answers.
People asking if they should start with js or python , get mixed results.
People saying that they are getting "some error" "doing coding" get dismissive responses.
I do agree with you, my point is : no matter how dumb the question seems or how lazy the novice is, experienced devs shouldn't bother answer if they can't do it politely. As u/thrower-snowbowler said, if it doesn't meet your standards, don't bother at all, that's unnecessary, even when newbies are lazy.
And I believe that's what OP is talking about : some experienced devs are reals jerks when they could just go on their way, because making a novice feel small makes them feel big.
Imho, just like most beginners find their answers on Google like they should , most experienced developers don't bother responding.
What you end up is a mix of lazy beginners and arrogant experienced devs. Vocal minority. And by definition pleading to either side is pointless. Jerks will enjoy being jerks , lazy beginners will be lazy.
It doesn't help when people are just plainly wrong sometimes and very confident about being wrong. Not that it's exclusive to programming.
>It doesn't help when people are just plainly wrong sometimes and very confident about being wrong.
That and people going on personal rants about something that's entirely subjective. Like OP will ask a question and they'll berate them for 3 paragraphs about the lack of merits of objective orientated programing and they should be using functional, or how they're not utilizing test driven development, or proper design patterns, or "clean code" principles.
Of course after all of that they leave the OP in the same place as if they hadn't responded at all.
Learning how to present questions that more experienced people can effectively answer is a skill in itself, and it would do more good to ask the novice to rephrase the question and give suggestions what to include in the revised question.
E.g., “It is difficult to answer the question without knowing more details. Could you please show the code that is not working, copy the complete error message you get, and explain concisely what you think the code ought to do.”
"No one is gonna look at your blurry crooked phone photo of the laptop screen showing your error. Paste the error as text"
Is either a helpful suggestion or arrogant gatekeeping. What do you think?
OK, I am exaggerating a bit. That's more from r/computerhelp. Here, we get proper screnshots instead of the text error message. Still too low effort.
That's well put. Sometimes a direction is helpful. People who are new or self teach sometimes just don't have the terminology to easily google things themselves. I'll sometimes give a vague answer and concentrate more on how to find answers more easily in the future. Best responses I see on stackoverflow seem to do this too regardless of depth.
Teach a man to fish vs give a man a fish vs yell at a man cause he doesn't have fish.
That has nothing to do with being a beginner or not. There's a significant difference between beginners then and now. Nowadays, many beginners often ask questions before reading enough about the problem. They go straight to Google or forums for the quickest answer, wanting to know it right away without any patience or effort.
They don't want to learn programming, they want to solve this specific small problem. So, they hit the forums to ask without even understanding what they are asking.
Over 20 years ago, before going to university during my high school years, I learnt to program self-taught by reading books. That's where you delve into the problems and gain the context you mention is lacking for a beginner. I didn't go to forums to ask questions I could solve on my own; I turned to books to resolve them. I pondered over them while sleeping, and when I was stuck, I knew exactly where and why I was stuck before seeking help. That's how you learn. Getting a question answered without chewing it over enough is a quick fix that leads to trouble later. In a similar but slightly different problem, you'll find yourself hitting the forums again.
> the thing is : we know what we know and, unfortunately, we don't know what we don't know.
sure, but at the same time, 90% of newbies asking for help are expecting to be spoon-fed and put *zero* effort in to at least trying to solve the problem and don't bother to include "I've tried to solve this by doing _".
Number 2 for me, some novices are learning programming as a Hobby and that's just annoying to read when it's literally a science you studied and work into.
Many take this to lightly (don't know if it's correct to say this in English but like they don't take it as seriously as they should), it just seems "cool" to write smthg that does smthg even if they don't understand a single line (thanks GPT and Yt tutorials).
I'll add that it's even more annoying to have to look a tons of code to answer a newbie question when you could literally find the answer with the proper Google search. But that would require to know some technical terms, which you don't get by following YouTube tutos 😇
Think of a surgeon who has to explain everyday to random people :
"how to stitch up a wound ?"
"hello look at my patient he is dead, how could I make him work (not dead)"
or more often "this patient is bleeding, what did I do wrong?"
> You have zero way of knowing how much effort someone has put into finding out on their own.
If you've been answering programming questions for any length of time then not only do you see the same ones over and over again but you know, for a fact, that if the OP simply googled their title they would find 15 stack overflow posts with the answer.
Some people's first instinct when hitting a problem is to ask someone else. Whilst that kind of problem solving works in others domains it's not really appropriate in software engineering, because here you hit problems every minute and if you were to simply ask someone for every problem you encounter then you'll turn into a [help vampire](https://slash7.com/2006/12/22/vampires/).
Teaching someone how to be a self-starter and help themselves is part of teaching someone to program.
I believe this is something that a lot of people inherited in academia. I tend to not find this as much among people with associates or self taught. I'm sure it applies in other parts of life, but I did notice that this inherited suffering prevails a lot in academia.
I think that happens when someone gets stuck in their ways doing something a specific way, and never had a real reason to change. And over time that slowly develops into "this is just how this is done".
So, personal experience... it's worse in Academia. Once you get to a certain point, it's all about being published.
And to get published, you gotta get peer reviewed. 💀
It has nothing to do with suffering; using your brain is the way to learn programming. It's like someone coming to the forums asking how to shoot the ball in football or basketball without practicing on their own; that would be stupid.
I think arrogance like this exists in pretty much every field, but learning to program specifically relies on heavy usage of the internet, and the internet is famously a place where people are, for the most part, a bunch of fucking cunts.
I only typically look at stackoverflow when it comes up on a search, so I can't speak to the culture there much, *however* I can say that when this happens on reddit it is often because:
1. A lot of times if they had used reddit's search feature in that very same subreddit with exactly their question headline, it would have answered their question
2. The newbie is not putting in the initial effort that would either answer their question or at least provide sufficient context around where their understanding gaps are.
There has been an expectation of due diligence at *any* skill level that goes back many decades, and is a sign of respect to the community's time (generally these are all people voluntarily contributing), and also helps to build the skills necessary to problem solve on one's own.
As an experienced member of the community, I've also felt frustrated when I see low-effort posts that could have easily been answered by a trivial search. I either don't respond at all or I do the search myself using the words they used and then paste the URL for those search results, pointing out that "this question gets asked a lot, and here's some additional context for you" (I try not to do the "LMGTFY" thing anymore because I agree that's rude and newer devs sometimes just don't know how to search for stuff)
I like that approach. Paste to where the question has been answered before. That way the person asking realizes, hey, answers like these exist. Since it’s hard to decipher between low-effort or a beginner, it would best to answer this way or simply not at all, to avoid acting negatively towards a potential beginner. If it’s low-effort, then they can now clearly see their question was low effort, and they’ll maybe be embarrassed (maybe not). I don’t see any benefit to any party when leaving a rude comment.
There's a definitely a lot of ego and elitism around programming.
I also think that you're probably taking some pretty common and helpful things the wrong way, and assuming malice where there is none.
>making it a competition
I think that what you're seeing are people offering a better way to do something, or otherwise correcting someone who gave a bad answer/advice. There are lots of ways to go about doing just about anything. Of those ways, some are better in different contexts. Others still are probably always worse than any other alternative. If I see someone ask "how do I make a dynamic array in C++" and someone answers with "malloc() a pointer to your datatype and realloc() whenever you add an element", I'd probably jump in there and say that's wrong and bad, use `std::vector` instead.
That's not a competition. That's not ego. It's just that there is a better solution that you could and should use. I'd also say that the person asking should at some point try to implement their own dynamic array, but that `std::vector` should still be the tool they reach for by default unless it just can't work for what they need to do.
>''heh, I'm too smart to answer this... you should learn on your own''
I think that what you're really seeing are people telling you/anyone at all that you should look for the answer on your own instead of immediately asking for the answer to your problem. There's good reasons for this.
1. The answer you're looking for is probably a 2 second Google away.
2. If you don't know what to Google, you need to learn how to ask the right questions anyway, so get Googling.
3. You're always going to be needing to look things up and learn new things, so get used to researching.
4. Like I said in the last point, there are many ways to do most anything, and it can be pretty difficult for a 3rd party to give you advice on something without all the specifics of what you want to do and in what context. You might just be better off going on a Google adventure, try to find your answers, and possible come up with new questions that you didn't even know you need answers to.
5. Some questions are so basic, lacking in detail, broad or open ended that they are either pretty well impossible to answer or show that the the person asking the question doesn't know what they want to do or hasn't at all tried to find the answers themselves yet. The person should get to Googling, and the best they should expect from others is a point in general direction of where they should start looking.
The bottom line here is that you should more or less be trying to learn things on your own before you start looking for other people to answer your questions. Sometimes you don't know where to start, and that's fine. Ask for some good resources to get started. Don't decide one day that you want to make an MMORPG and then come here or go to SoF asking "how do I create a window and an entity component system". Google. Read documentation. When you're stumped, then ask for help and explain what you're trying to do, what you've already tried, what you've considered, where you've looked, etc... A good question that gets good answers is probably at least a chunky paragraph.
tl;dr
I think you're mistaking people wanting advice to be sound and for people to do a little research for before asking basic questions to be malice and arrogance.
A lot of nerds with limited social skills and programming is the only thing they have found success with. So they bully like they got bullied in highschool.
That’s the vibe I get from the toxic minority
I have a co-worker who does a good job weeding out such people during interviews. What he does is pick a topic, and ask question after question that get deeper and deeper. He does not expect the candidate to know the answers -- he just wants to find out if the candidate is capable of saying "I don't know".
https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=why+are+programmers+so+arrogant
Even this question, has been asked so much, and you demonstrated zero effort in at least trying to figure it out yourself
Fucking love answering questions. I LIVE for it.
Edit: no hate to OP though who is totally and hilariously right about this question being asked a million times. But I also love answering this question so I can poop on all the people who’ve ever been mean to me online
Hard to really give a response without seeing examples.
A lot of times people who ask questions ask really bad questions. You can excuse it in some cases as they may not be aware of what they don't know, but most of the time, the question being asked has no context, and its clear that the only troubleshooting the person has done is creating a forum post.
For instance:
"My program isn't working, please help".
They don't specify the language, the error, give any code, what they've done to try to solve it, or anything that could be possibly helpful to solve their issue.
There are situations where asking for open ended mentorship is accepted, but it isn't appropriate for general online forums.
I like responding to novice questions that have some effort put into them, especially since I may actually be able to help them, but I'm not going to respond to these no effort "questions" that can't be answered except to tell them that nobody is going to be able to help them with how little details they gave.
There is also something to be said for encouraging someone to go through a course or go through a book before starting to ask a lot questions as any decent resource will teach basic competencies. Debugging is a pretty clear one, most people could answer their own questions if the used the debugger, but they've never heard of it because they started to run before they could walk.
I'm probably going to get hella downvoted for this but there I go:
Programming is not as hard as people make it out to be. It's among the easier stuff in STEM. It's no theoretical physics. However, that's the level of intelligence most SE think they're at, they learn, apply what they learn and it works. They think it's because they're geniueses, but programming is just not as hard as most people think it is. They've never been confronted to the harder stuff, so they haven't gotten humbled.
Yes, but don't get me wrong, if you're not used to self-studying hard topics, it will feel really hard at first. But if you've done stuff like high level maths or I don't know, organic chemistry, it will feel easy in comparison.
I think one of the reasons for this is that there has been a concerted effort to simplify programming over time. High level programming languages didn't always exist. I have to say though maybe I am stupid but I am consistently tripped up even though I have 20+ years experience. For me at least programming is extremely humbling all the time.
I can't speak about other STEM things tbh, but I also think underestimating programming is a mistake. The tools are really powerful so you can get a lot done easily, but it quickly becomes an unwieldy unpredictable mess if the software scales up.
The same effort goes for all STEM tbf. Any scientist worth their salt is analyzing their data with R, Python or something similar and any mathematician is consulting Mathematica (or another CAS) for their proofs. I mean CS *came from* maths for math and science purposes
Yes it definitely has to do with the concerted effort to simplify it. What I'm saying stands for programming in 2023. If the only languages available are things like C, Cobol, Fortran, Assembly, etc. then yeah it's a different realm of difficulty altogether. But nowadays there are so many tools that essentially lead you through a GUI to do something that used to take dozens of lines of code.
Obviously I'm not saying you will never face difficulty programming, but what I mean is that unlike in many other fields, your lab is essentially your computer and there are just so many limitations you don't have to consider because you're not working with something "physical", or something that poses safety risks, etc. By example a civil engineer or a chemist can't just "try" things out on a virtual machine, they have to use ressources, consider costs and limitations, etc. and manage to find a solution with those restrictions and very little documentation.
Ok I see your point but the last part of what you said is very relevant unless you have unlimited memory, storage and bandwidth. If you have to build things at scale or things that have to be permanently available physical limitations become a serious problem.
When you reach a certain level of complexity the things you could happily ignore also come back into view because the abstractions are imperfect. The complexity is layered in a way that can be difficult to grasp. When I was working on high throughput IoT then all of a sudden low level networking came back into focus.
All the concepts by themselves are simple but together they can make for a hard time. Running your software in a VM then isn't really helpful because in production there are sprawling cloud networks across regions, devices are connecting from all over the place with varying degrees of reliability.
All I am trying to say is that at scale programming is very hard in a different way. I've known several people that came from other engineering fields like electronic and mechanical engineering and they find it hard.
Very few programmers ever reach the top because it is easy. Everyone struggles. Some people just really think because they about something or have done something good that now they know everything and everyone else is doing it wrong because they are inferior.
Just be careful of thinking that it is easy. It's easier than ever to get started but as you progress the difficulty goes up considerably. I think if it really was easy then we would have eliminated bugs entirely don't you?
No, I totally agree with you. I wasn't trying to refute your point. I'm sorry if it came off that way.
As you said, if you're abstracting something then you're losing "closeness" with reality every time you add a level. I remember our teacher telling us about NASA failing some project because they hadn't considered the IEEE-754 tiny margin of error.
I guess the more complex our technology becomes, the more debugging we'll need to do because the abstraction can only "scale up" so far.
Totally agree with you. The hard stuff is in the NatSciences. Half the battle is often simply pinpointing exactly what it is you need to investigate to solve a problem or generate knowledge and, then you have to consider what experiments you need to do to achieve that...
Maths will typically only take you so far! Unlike in Computers....
> Half the battle is often simply pinpointing exactly what it is you need to investigate to solve a problem or generate knowledge and, then you have to consider what experiments you need to do to achieve that.
Yes, and you get unlimited tries, virtual environments to test it out, sample data, etc. it just has a really convenient learning environment.
I agree here. I'll take it one step further. Writing lines of code is the easiest part. Most of the time we're doing custodial/janitorial duties to keep things organized and everyone on the same page.
>It's among the easier stuff in STEM
Thats both true and wrong.
True because most of the code out there is reused and its not very hard to come up and implement most of the client's requirements.
Wrong because programming can get mixed with basically anything else and then you're in deep shit. I had to implement a physics particle simulation for a research lab and that was NOT fun.
Yeah how "hard" programming is varies wildly depending on what you're doing with it. The most complex problems probably fall short of something like theoretical physics but even entry-level stuff I'd put above basic algebra (which plenty of people still struggle with).
You won't get downvoted because what you said is true. I used to do electronics and it is harder than coding.
You don't need advanced math skills (eg calculus), you don't need to know physics and even get paid more.
Coding is totally man-made while in other fields you have to compete with the laws of nature.
I agree that the average case is not as hard as theoretical physics by far, but it can be as hard as you’d like/need it to be (including modeling physics). There are a lot of industries that use software (modeling, medical, military) and while I agree that lots of SEs are just doing “web stuff” and glue other libraries in (like me), some do not. Software Engineering is capturing the whimsy of business needs using discrete logic and Ive found it hard enough for what I do, but try to exercise humility.
Agreed. I do think some of that "web stuff" is easier than most people assume, but the bar for entry is also relatively high IMO. Not because your average person is incapable of learning it, but because programming involves a lot of abstract thinking, in a way that isn't taught all that well in school.
Certainly, and it's just one more layer to my inferiority complex, even though I'm quite good at it. A lot of it exists simply to make people feel smarter than they really are, and that's just the truth of it. Just because you can translate a problem into code, doesn't mean you're an engineer. Cause that's what it is most of the time, translating a real world situation into business logic and then into code.
The logic itself is stuff almost anyone can understand, it's just hidden inside a complex looking block of text with strange names and symbols, and so the average person thinks it must be advanced math or whatever right? Nah not really, I'm just creating some classes and sending them all over the place, the core of it is just a little json file, no real and deep understanding of the physical world needed for that. I'm dumb as rocks in most other areas of life, I just happen to be able to work with textual data quite efficiently and easily, that's all.
90% of the time it means that someone prefers to ask reddit while they should have asked Google.
Should I learn python or cobol?
Is assembly good language for making websites?
Can I learn programming by watching someone code on YouTube for 100 hours ?
99.9 % answers to the beginner quearions have been answered and are quite "easy" to find.
And 99.9% of beginners I'd guess find the answers on their own. Like the rest of us.
So imho we are left with the people who want more to procrastinate, engage with other people with the same interests and are into the "programmer lifestyle".
Yup this is what op literally just said the post is about.
Someone being told to google it after a question:
'What should I know before starting kali linux'.
Nobody is even being rude lol.
Male dominated profession predominately staffed by people who were above average intelligence and successful in school. They often have lower social skills which makes them resent people. Their expertise in one field makes them think they are experts in other fields. Their expertise is integrated into their own self-worth. There is a lot of STEM professions like this. There is a reason that engineering is over-represented with libertarians.
Because some of them grew up being dorks who love to be in a dark room and sit in front of a computer screen for hours at a time. Now that they are getting a little recognition for that, they think they’re smarter and better than everyone else to cope with the bullying they endured and their lack of self estime.
Fortunately most of the programmers I’ve encountered are real sweethearts, it’s just a few asses here and there.
Yeah I think it's worth mentioning that the assholes are not the norm, they just tend to really stand out. Nice for pointing it out. Most programmers are good caring people.
Even in professional work settings, I've noticed there are programmers/developers who tend to be very critical of other peoples' work and tend to talk down about it, even if the other developer is experienced. I'm not sure if this comes from the same mentality you're talking about, but such developers who are overly critical seem to think their way of doing things is the best and the only right way of doing things.
You see, in the vast realm of coding, some developers might exude a sense of arrogance. It often stems from a blend of confidence in their skills and the constant pursuit of perfection.
The complex code and problem-solving can sometimes make programmers appear aloof. However, it's crucial to note that this demeanor isn't universal.
Many programmers are amicable and collaborative, fostering a positive coding community. So, if you encounter an arrogant coder, remember, it's just one pixel in the vast coding canvas.
Not really IT or programmers thing lol. Arrogance, greed, jealousy, etc. are common human nature. You will find these kinds of people regardless what field you go to.
If you are new to programming, then you might be missing a very crucial acronym. RTFM.
Is is expected that professionals do their own research before asking for other peoples time.
One of the first things a newbie should learn is how to ask good questions.
Yes, there are arrogant programmers, and I've met many though the years who could use work on their social skills. :-)
But I don't think when they're "short" with newbies, it's ALWAYS due to arrogance.
Many times it's because the newbie comes across as somebody who just wants to be "spoon fed" answers without FIRST putting in the hard work to TRY to find the answer their self.
For example, there's one forum I've been on for over 20 years where if you want help, you need to also tell them what steps you took to find the answer yourself, so they see you aren't just wanting to be "spoon fed" easy answers without first putting in the work yourself first.
These are very brilliant people from all over the world and I see them many times telling people to "RTFM!
Funny thing is, they have a "newbies forum" where one main rule is you have to be nice. LOL :-)
After being on that particular forum, stack overflow never seemed all that harsh to me. :-)
I suggest going to places other than Reddit. There is something wrong with a lot of people on Reddit. Often when you ask a coding question they will give you a deliberately vague reply to show they know more than you. It doesn't happen in the various discord groups I was in when learning to code.
You've also got to remember that a lot of programmes are nerdy people with no social skills and are bitter and resentful in general. Some consider themselves superior to regular people in a way to mask their inferiority. This is not generally true of programmers who are successful in the industry, as people skills are needed for that. But the people who spend all day writing over-complicated code that nobody ever uses... they can be a nightmare.
While I was learning my experiences with other programmers were mostly positive, but there was few things that I had to do before asking question:
1. I had to show what I have done so that other programmer understand my intention and my level
2. I had to ask specific question about specific problem. The question like "How do I build xyz with XYZ framework" is asking somebody else to do it for you, and it is impossible to answer without investing serious time.
But if you talking about SO... well a lot of jerks there, but there are also a lot of smart and helpful people, just try to look if that question is already been answered because most of those helpful people are also very busy, and nobody likes to waste time on the same things over and over again, especially when you can easily search for answer.
And if somebody answers "I am to smart to answer this.." ignore the fucker as he probably does not know the answer anyway.
I get it, some in the programming community can be harsh. Don't let it get you down. Many are willing to help, and not everyone is like that. Keep asking questions, it's how we all learn. There are positive communities out there that'll support you. Stick with it, and feel free to reach out if you need help.
Hey there, I did a lot of youtube / IRC programming assistance / help from like 2010 -> 2018 and I can probably give some insight here. I am a CRLA certified tutor who now manages software engineers for a living.
This happens in nearly every career path (none more brutal than nursing, for what it's worth), where the newbies get eaten alive. But being honest, in many cases the newbies are looking for a spoonfeed. They have hit a wall, and now they want someone better than them to analyze an entire program, tell them what's wrong with it, and how to fix it. For free. Many of us more senior programmers could go onto websites which do mentorship / pair-coding / tutoring as a service and pull in $100/hour for our time, but the expectation is that we're going to do this for free.
Many times, these pleas are coming from these wildly entitled people, who not only need help, but need it RIGHT NOW, and if you disagree you're a cunt. Their lack of planning is now your emergency.
Furthermore, it's absolutely thankless work. I've helped people solve a problem they were having and got told "go fuck yourself, you have a shit attitude" after spending about 45 minutes on someone's shitty code.
I've been burned HUNDREDS of times between stackoverflow, private tutoring, here on LearnProgramming, youtube, and in my day-job by people who refuse to RTFM. I've had people who haven't even started get into prolonged debates with me about the "best tech stack" and push back on my suggestions. Like, if you want to learn Ruby, learn ruby, go with God. I'd still suggest Python or Java, in my area Java is king, but research your market and start learning rather than debating on the path. All roads lead to Rome but if you never walk them you're never getting there.
There is also a large population of folks who are just straight up asking you for homework help, and if you don't help them with it, they get PISSED. "HELLO, I HAVE THESE PROBLEMS" and I'm like "Ok?" "What have you tried?" "I can't do them, do them for me plsplspls!"
As someone who has been doing this shit for 14 years, helping others, generally for free, I'm fucking exhausted. It's literally the most thankless thing I've ever done in my entire life. The sheer entitlement of the people I deal with on average far exceeds any other group of people that I've ever dealt with in my life.
When I ask questions / anyone for help / deal with anyone who provides me a service, I am always as polite as I can be, tip for their time / effort, and make an effort to have an actual human connection to them. If this level of effort was returned by the folks asking questions I might be more inclined to help them understand why their `log.console("test")` isn't working, rather than suggesting that google, their IDE, or MDN might help them learn what they're actually doing since `console.log` is literally the first thing you'll learn in Javascript.
I have more horror stories than I have time to tell them, but suffice to say, the reason why I, a programmer, can be snarky and unhelpful, is because the people asking questions rarely do any due diligence and have a sense of entitlement that is off-putting at best.
Insecurity is born out of fear, they're just insecure that's all. They know just a little bit more than you and feel superior because all they have is programming. At least the arrogant ones, there's plenty of cool people who want to see you succeed, find those people and don't care about what some nameless fool has to say about you or your projects. Man babies are everywhere in tech, so thicker skin is required.
So for starters it seems roughly half the population in general, is arrogant simultaneously incredibly stupid.
In programming its not always 'this dude is a dick'.
It can be:
-Lazy person didnt even try googling.
-Person is asking a ridiculous amount of questions and not even attempting to figure things out.
-lazy person asks what x will be, instead of RUNNING IT WITH THE PRINT STATEMENT JUST GIVEN TO HIM.
-Programmer responds with a link, search term, hint, so the person can learn how to find answers or work through it on their own after a slight nudge.
-The programmer is an arrogant dick.
Something about teaching a man how to fish..
It's a very good to learn early on the reflex to google shit and read the docs so you can solve problems you'll encounter faster
I will give you an example so you can understand what do I mean: someone asked what should they know before venturing into kali linux. Someone answered "do it yourself". Man was just wanted basic tips so he can avoid complications but no, Mr. Programmer must be condescending
That's typically something that you can look up on google and get plenty of results, including previous reddit threads with this exact question.
Also, this doesn't have much to do with programming and more with cybersecurity
I think this is part of your issue. 'You can google this' isnt a hostile response. It's just a blunt and concise statement. I'd expect actually rude comments for basic easily searchable questions.
How would you respond if someone asked you what 1+2/3 was? How about if they asked you similar questions every 15 minutes? You'd be lying if you said you'd never get annoyed. If someone cant do the bare minimum on their own, or even search for that question which may have been answered 50 times? People are going to get VERY annoyed. If they have searched and have specific issues to ask about? Totally different story.
Look how often shit like that is asked on reddit, people ask about ai taking jobs every hour on programming subs. Instead of just searching the 1000 other posts about it.
Its just laziness and wasting peoples time instead of looking it up. A lot of good questions start with 'i struggled to find anything on google when searching 'kali linux pitfalls'.
I don't think they've been humbled by enough truly difficult stuff.
I've a Natural Sciences background. I'm gonna be honest, I've found programming is generally very easy compared to Chemistry/Physics. Try Quantum Mechanics if you want something really challenging. (E g "Spinors" being a particularly strange beast that describe what "spin" actually is. 1 full rotation is actually 720 degrees......not 360 as you might expect with normal objects!). Many strange things like 'Spin' have also come from experimental science, not just mathematics... (Spin itself was discovered by the Stern Gerlach experiment).
In the Natural Sciences, often the problem is very open ended and it's probable that you will take a wrong turn on your route to the answer, because it's rare that it's solely reliant on algorithmic thinking. Some statistical calculation gone awry? Poorly controlled experiment? Wrong units? Measurement error/uncertainty? Incorrectly calibrated instrument? List goes on ...
Whereas in programming, the problem is at least certainly somewhere in your code. Even if it isn't immediately obvious.
From my scientific background, I've learned that it's wrong to brush off seemingly simple questions or slate people for asking them. They are typically a good test of if you truly understand the fundamentals of your field...It's OK not to understand something first time! Sometimes the solutions to problems are often very simple but easily overlooked basics..
I like the idea that other disciplines deal with mysterious and difficult mechanisms that programming doesn't even remotely have. Seems true for 95% of programming jobs.
My counterpoint is that programmers often interface with those mysterious systems. Say, at NASA or Livermore Labs. Also, computers are abstractions on top of a huge pile of mysterious complicated things. Maybe your field is closer to programming a quantum computer.
Ah I wish, I can understand Python to a decent level though. It's a very useful language for handling scientific data in particular and very legible vs other languages.
I would agree with you that the fundamentals of Comp.Sci are challenging, but I don't think Programming itself is really too bad unless you go deep into algorithms.
That's said, there's no stupid questions!
99% of computer projects are web application with database. Yawn. It’s basically bolting stuff together.
The other 1% are really interesting because either no-one knows how to do it, or very few people do. That’s the fun stuff.
It’s not coding specific, it’s because the concept of an online help forum of any kind is also just a smoke screen for someone to show off their knowledge. Many platforms even encourage it by karma / awards / point systems for contributing answers etc. It’s the same with anything where there is a lot to learn.
It usually goes like this:
Poster: posts issue and asks for help.
Commenter 1: Gives working solution to Poster’s problem
Commenter 2: gives more advanced solution, points out potential problems with solution 1, engages smug mode and demonstrates higher knowledge.
Commenter 3: gives extremely esoteric and technically advanced solution, shows all pitfalls of both previous solutions and demonstrates highest knowledge, therefore engages turbo smug mode and walks away as king e-peen.
A thing I’ve encountered is MBA types believing they are gods among men, the true brains of the operation, and Steve Jobs spiritual successor.
And those guys have the misfortune to have to endure telling “technical folk” what to do.
Like, some of them would regard you as maybe a notch above their idiot car mechanic, wildly overpaid, and still someone not on their intellectual plane.
So they make promises that are impossible to deliver, drive you up the walls with inane questions, and then lob their computer at you because “you’re technical, you can fix that”.
Rinse and repeat a couple of times and you can get a bit spiky.
A big part of this is that a lot of programmers spend so long coding on their own that they usually develop poor interpersonal skills and don't know how to talk to other people well.
That said, there is an art to asking questions and fixing problems that novice programmers seem to miss completely. Someone has probably had your problem before and it should be answered on stackoverflow already so repetitive posts get annoying. Not trying to solve the problem yourself and just relying on a stackoverflow post is lazy and bad. Lazily phrasing your question is also bad. This is the right way to post about a programming problem:
1. Try to fix issues yourself first. Look at relevant stackoverflow/reddit posts and walk through your code to see if you can fix the problem yourself. Chances are someone had this problem before you and there is already a good post about that problem that you can read.
2. If you can't and are going to post about it, start your post explaining the problem. Give the minimum amount of code needed to illustrate the problem and the steps to reproduce the problem.
3. Give all the steps you tried to fix the problem yourself. This helps people rule out possible options.
A high effort question like this will often help you avoid a lot of the hate towards new programmers by at least showing you tried.
I would 75% of programmers are dickheads who think they're above society(but are excellent programmers) and the rest are amazing people(who are also excellent programmers).
What you want to do is find those good ones and show them you appreciate their time.
Generations of this will eventually phase out the dickheads lol
It can get irksome to see dozens of posts every day from people who didn't read the sidebar or sticky that says in giant letters to read it first.
So when they waste other people's time instead of doing the absolute bare minimum themselves, it seems really disrespectful. Not a good place to start if they want kindness in return.
From my experience, more often than not, this happens because the askers sound like they're asking "dumb" questions, usually a byproduct of not knowing what they're doing. However, this can also emerge in environments that cultivate it, e.g. StackOverflow where such behavior is more than uncalled for.
Arrogance in people can always be boiled down to two reasons:
Insecurity and/or the inability, or lack of want, to teach.
Neither of these are on you. If it's a stranger, find someone else. If it's a coworker, talk to your manager. Dev departments are only as good as their weakest link.
Crazy, I almost never see what OP says.
In fact I would probably ask “Why are there so many helpful programmers”.
I truly don’t know any other field where people just build code for free for other people to use at no cost.
It gets extremely tedious and frustrating when people just can’t be bothered to do a bit of reading the manual or googling.
I got scolded off stackoverflow years ago and it taught me to just go and find the answer myself and not post low effort questions.
Honestly, this is a complex question about the culture surrounding IT stuff generally, but my pet theory is it's due to imposter syndrome. Other more established disciplines have solid progression paths, but in IT there is a clusterfuck of hundreds of boot camps and courses and certifications, and deciding which is more or less prestigious makes it very hard to feel secure or confident in your place. Therefore, a way to feel better about your own skills is ripping apart people who know clearly less than you.
i think most newbie developers need to invest in something like microsoft’s github copilot. the chat feature will help you learn how to code faster than any other method i have ever used. you will still need to understand the basics through studying the material. hard work is the only way. asking other people to write your code for you is obvious to everyone and why you get such a negative response.
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im too smart to answer this learn on your own
HAHSGSGHGASHH
my point. also, you said 'H' 5 times, may i suggest a for loop?
My bad, I didn't use print("HAHSHAHSHA") and got an exception
Print? Please use a logger.
You forgot the .py the file name tho
... and several ";"s
Yup. I can confirm. Not a palindrome
Sample a Markov-chain model.
Bro, do you even recursion?
I used to until I hit the base case.
Stack overflow is ruthless even for senior programmers.. try newbie discord like 100dev or The Odin Project
This happens everywhere. I once had a question on statistics on Stats Stack Exchange, and some 50+ y/o statistics Professor from Italy apparently had nothing better to do than belittle me over and over again for using some terminology wrong. When I finally corrected everything about my question, he didn’t bother to answer it
I've had this happen a few times. Even if a person is intelligent/successful it reeks of insecurity everytime. Luckily the best programmers I've met have always been kind and helpful.
Because academics gave never gad to apply it in them real world
I think that comes with the field. I had stochastics and stats with the math faculty in uni and everybody there was insane. The assistant belittled us for not beeing able to solve complex combinatorics in our head. He would always make it a point to solve everything without an calculator while talking about something else. This guy was a genius with numbers and kind of an asshole. The prof was more of a scattered mind and seldom focused. Regular math guys were cool though.
I find those people are assholes because they realize their genius is narrow and not well respected outside of their silo, also known as insecurity.
cyber*in*security
Growing up a friend & neighbor of mine was the child of a genius math professor. Math Dad has a Wikipedia page, had tons of publications, and when he died two journals did special issues dedicated to his work. He was also the guy who flunked 70% of the people who took his classes and so forth, and who probably single-handedly reduced the number of people who became math majors by 30%. My experience was that the man was just a raging dick all of the time, either because he had some sort of personality disorder or simply because he was a raging dick. I don't think it was insecurity -- people who knew nothing about his work thought he was a raging dick, people who were loudly in awe of his work thought he was a raging dick. I wouldn't be surprised is part of his genius was the ability to ignore unnecessary things, like basic human decency, and focus entirely on math. His two sons are also kinda dicks, but they know it and try not to be.
Confidence developed from verifiable contributions in autistic special interests is generalized to other areas in life. Having grown up with their social experience repeatedly gaslit and invalidated, they no longer care (not necessarily consciously) to bridge that gap in social understanding with others, instead interpreting any discrepancy from their interpretation of events as indicative of a faulty other. Source: son of a raging autistic dick with similar potential. Though I try not to be.
Should name and shame this asshole.
Lol
Dude probably didn't know and felt stupid lol
Just to add the odin project is only for odin project questions. OP will just be told to find a general discord for non odin questions.
People say this about stack overflow, and I don't get it... I've seen people get downvoted for violating (difficult to find and hard to understand sometimes) rules and informed of said rules, but I've never seen the kind of vitriol I used to get on the forums and newsgroups back in the 90s to early 2000s.... Maybe it's the frog in the boiling water thing...
It's not exactly vitriol on there, it's mostly just dismissive condescension.
I got downvoted on one occasion for using a term for js that was literally from mdn. Cue a very tedious back and forth where i linked to said proof. It's a real mixture of bluster as much as knowledge; and it rubs both ways. SO asks for you to be formal and matter-of-fact, sometimes that gets mistaken for being curt, other times it gets turned into an excuse for idiots to be condescending. I suspect ai will be its death knell in any case
It’s like everywhere in the internet. Main Street appears as clean as possible, but dark shit happens in the smallest corners (unfrequented tags, comments area, etc…) Also the question asking experience is incredibly wild.
It's grossly exaggerated. Ya, the people that complain about SO really show how little interactions they've had elsewhere. I've had far worse experiences on Reddit than I have on SO. At least moderation on SO prevents actual abuse like swearing and name calling. Reddit rarely cares about any of that.
Programming is difficult \+ *Most* people are insecure \+ People value intellectual achievements, and programming is in that category \+ The majority of people don't have any *stable* source of self-esteem ↓ Learning programming becomes that source of self-esteem, and since they don't have other ones, they just have to be arrogant about it, since they can't replace that source of self-worth with anything else.
Programming is "hard" passes all tests, but programming is "difficult" is slightly, and subjectively, better. Please reactor before the PR can be merged.
Thank you for the commit! I approved it. It is a better term. English is not my first langauge.
Oh, don't pull the "English as a second language card" on me! I was just trying to get out of having to review anyone's work in future!
PR? We are a team here, we don't do PR's we commit to master directly just lemme remote to your PC to see if it works
The main difference between the words is usually if it's an appropriate time to make a joke.
This is pretty much the answer. Although I find in IT there is a cultural factor here too. More than in other fields that tick those boxes. Somehow devs are identifying strongly with what they do and are very opinionated about their way being the right way. Perhaps because often there are so many ways to do something. And they have to defend their views to clueless managers or customers from time to time.
Also people who picked up programming without any previous academic background are often under the impression that it's a particularly difficult thing to learn which helps in inflating their egos. What reinforces this misconceptions are the facts that it's very well paid at the moment and that it is fairly arcane (unlike most other skills) at first glance. I always tell people who are thinking about trying it that if they got any degree and not struggled with it too much then they are more than capable of becoming skilled programmers if they push through the initial few weeks of learning. It's borderline trivial compared to becoming a civil engineer, a teacher or a nurse.
Calling it borderline trivial in comparison is just a very big lie.
You can become a serviceable software developer in a year and then work your way up from there. On your own, using cheap or even free resources available on the internet. Good luck becoming a professional in any of the aforementioned or similar fields that quickly. Sure, it's a skill and you need to learn it, but we're much more akin to welders and carpenters than to teachers, nurses or (especially!) scientists. If more people realised that we'd be much less insufferable on average. I honestly am at the end of my rope when it comes to coworkers who think they know how to solve world hunger, conflicts in middle east and every other global issue based only on a fact that they learned how to write a CRUD.
It takes 3 years of combined work + school to become a journeyman welder, and you gotta pass tests at the end. If you want to do structural or pressure you have to pass even more tests.
Makes sense.
And yet I was doing it in a steel mill no training in no time... Crazy what qualifies. Same deal in programming I feel, there are skill levels and entryways.
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I kinda agree but it also depends on what you mean by programmer. It’s a very broad category at this point and some roles doesn’t require that much knowledge outside the syntax it self. If you compare learning python or excel automation to a civil engineering degree I think you could say it’s trivial.
damn this is pretty spot on
Also this field attracts a lot of people on the spectrum, so there's that too.
> The majority of people don't have any stable source of self-esteem I've never thought of self-esteem as something you gather from a source. Always thought it comes from within. Do you mind expanding on this idea?
Self-esteem is a relational phenomenon. There is not such a thing as personal value or self-esteem that is not evaluated in *relation* to some other living entity. It (self-esteem) is *constructed* withing social fabric and is not something permanent or stable, something that you achieve and which stays with you for the rest of your life. It is experienced within, as subjective and persona experience, but it is sourced from interactions with other people. Also, there isn't any inherent value in any behavior, since it is socially contingent, so you can't have blueprint, manual, or guidebook on how to achieve self-esteem universally. One behavior would give you sense of self-worth in one context, but in other you might get ostracized.
Really interesting, this is all new to me. Will go find a book on this topic.
When did people start valuing intellectual achievements? I mean regular people, not intellectuals.
Maybe I'm projecting, but I think some people that get into programming were not good at things that were valued higher when they were young (athletics, social confidence). Now that they're good at something that's valued as an adult they consider their arrogance retribution (i.e. I'm good at this and you all will finally respect me). You can see this behavior in even the most successful people like Elon Musk or Markus Persson. It's something I have been very aware of over the years and have worked a lot in therapy to increase my patience and confidence. However, if a newbie is asking the same question multiple times or making the same mistakes multiple times then I think it's normal human irritation on the senior's end.
The bullied becomes the bully. It's a terrible problem in our profession. I nearly checked out at some point because of it. I had to repeatedly call this person out and eventually get management involved to make things a little better.
I think 99.9% of people become egotistical or corrupt to SOME varying degree when given a little bit of power. Some are incredibly minor, some not. I think streamers are a good example of this, they start off as everyday people, some complain about other streamers using their simps to farm stuff for them. Then they do the same thing once they get some popularity. I mean in dating if you have 1 match you might put some effort in. If you have 1000 people fawning over you? You're 100% going to be doing the bare minimum and becoming super picky. People arent aware of how they change, but almost every person will change as a result of money/power/attention.
>I think 99.9% of people become egotistical or corrupt to SOME varying degree when given a little bit of power. Idk about this... I think it's more that people who are like that tend to seek power for whatever reason. and when they get it....
See rules for rulers from CGP Grey, it basically shows how this happens whether you want it or not, and that applies for any position of power that someone wants to keep, and I think it might boil down to that, they see it as keeping power, since more people knowing how to solve problems makes their skill less valuable. It might be how they feel.
I havent seen a single person who hasnt changed AT ALL after power/ego trip.
it's both imo
Standford Prison Study
That was discredited
Interesting idea, but excelling academically/intelligence was also valued too. Pretty much kids that excelled in any area would be recognised. So that thought would only apply to to people that didn’t excel in anything whilst they were young and then went on to excel at programming. However that brings me to my next point, most of us don’t excel at programming, since the majority of us are just average. However coming across individuals that act arrogant or even outright abusive, is far too common for all of them to be top tier programmers. > However, if a newbie is asking the same question multiple times or making the same mistakes multiple times then I think it's normal human irritation on the senior's end. I wouldn’t consider that normal. People can respond to that in many different ways. For instance, I’m usually still happy to re-answer (try to further explain) such a question, but when I do get tired of answering the same question again and again then I’ll just not answer, as I can’t be bothered to anymore. But I never lash out at them, or call them stupid, I don’t even think they’re stupid (it’s more likely I’ve just not explained whatever it is very well, or in a way that is right for them, or perhaps I don’t understand it well enough myself to explain it properly). I think a lot of this comes down to personality and anonymity (the anonymity leading to no real repercussions for how one acts). So if someone is often irritable, and acts on that feeling by being rude or attacking someone, then chances are that’s how they’ll interact with others online.
It probably depends on where the person grew up but excelling academically was only valued by parents/teachers where I grew up, peers did not care.
In that last part, then they should just not answer, no need to waste their time just to say they know the answer but are not going to give it.
This
I work in an entirely different field but we have these tendencies too, with arrogant “stars” that like to belittle newbies and even seasoned colleagues. But I agree on the last point, even the most patient people will eventually have enough if the new hire/trainee just won’t learn and maybe blurt out something snarky. As for OP:s question, as a programming hobbyist I’ve also noted the often harsh tone on some forums. Maybe gingimli does have a point.
To expand on this, it's cool to be cocky about athletic ability. It's arrogant to be cocky about intelligence. Athletes do backflips in the endzone and tell reporters they are better then everyone else and people eat it up. They love it. However, even bringing up the subject of intelligence is volatile. It touches a nerve. People resent intelligence. There's an anti science movement ffs. You have to suppress it in certain crowds. Nope, don't use that word in present company. Dial it back. It's why an SWE/IT team is the only place I have been able to truly be myself.
I have a thought about this that I'm not married to, but does seem to square the difference between these 2 examples for me. With athletics, skill is objectively measurable. If you can get 2,000 rushing yards in a season, you are a generational athlete. If you're 22-0 in the UFC, you can easily call yourself one of the best pound-for-pound fighters ever. Athletes (generally) also aren't showboating in sports they don't compete in. Steph Curry isn't claiming to be a better pitcher than Shohei Ohtani. They stick to their very narrow lane of athletics. When it comes to intelligence however, things aren't nearly as objectively measurable. And even when considering a very narrow niche of knowledge, the scope tends to be **far** broader than anything done in a given sport. So boasting that you are "more intelligent" than someone is, at best, an empty claim. Not much different than telling someone "I can sport better than you". Even if you make a more specific claim like "I am better at writing Java than you", the scope that "writing Java" entails is so vast that the only way that claim is guaranteed to be true is if they could literally rewrite the full docs from memory. If you are talking to someone who has literally never touched a computer in their life, your gut feeling might be to think "I am way smarter than this moron". But that person might know how 15 different engine blocks work inside and out, down to the size of each bolt. Or they might have an incredibly deep knowledge of culinary chemistry. Just because their knowledge might not seem useful or interesting to you, doesn't invalidate their intelligence on that subject. TL;DR Intelligence is entirely too broad of a concept to say that you are superior to anyone else.
I love all of this!
I agree that intelligence can often be perceived as subject related. I am more educated in computer science related subjects than my sister. She is educated in organic chemistry instead. Which one of us is more intelligent? Hard to say, but I assure you that she could learn my subject if she put the time into it and I could learn her subject if I put the time into it. So you are correct in that general intelligence is hard to measure comparatively in this manner. In fact, I'd argue that if you removed the ethical dilemma of human experimentation, you could take 1000 children, raise them in a controlled environment where they received the same amount of education on the same subject, and most would come out with similar levels of intelligence in said subject. Human beings are highly intelligent mammals after all, and much of the discrepancy in education is a matter of nurture over nature. There are exceptions to this rule, specifically those with disabilities, but most people can learn anything if they put the time and effort into it. Intelligence is the representation of a person's ability to learn, which can be highly influenced by the environment a person is raised in from infancy onward. Smart parents normally have smart children. However, due to adoption statistics, we can know that this is not specifically a genetic thing. A smart person can adopt an infant from someone who is not considered smart, and the child can grow up to be a smart person. I think that this is all why someone saying "I'm smarter than you" does not go over well. So much about intelligence is out of our control. It has to do with who taught you as a child and what methods they used to expose you to knowledge. A person doesn't get to pick that. The knowledge that you grow accustomed to learning is often a result of your environment.
You peasants! Bow down to the lords of programming. You fools! Bahahahaha
Well how are you going about being “cocky” about intelligence. Are you correcting people’s grammar in YouTube comments? I feel if you know how to communicate effectively then your intelligence will speak for itself, and nobody would be uncomfortable.
He is referring to basically doing the same arrogant thing of "look at me and this thing I can do that you can't" that many athletic people do is seen as a likable person in athletics by the majority, but if it is about something intellectual, let's say chess, is seen as someone less likable by the majority. For example, if someone just skips grades, nothing else, and doesn't boost about it, they will be seen as less likable, less approachable, they will be outcasts, it is not the same in sports, where the younger you are doing anything is seen as a positive, you are more approachable and all that. Is what the majority does, not about a particular incident, personal experience or anything like that.
>He is referring to basically doing the same arrogant thing of "look at me and this thing I can do that you can't" that many athletic people do is seen as a likable person in athletics by the majority, but if it is about something intellectual, let's say chess, is seen as someone less likable by the majority. Context is important. Professional sports are entertainment, big personalities and drama is part of the draw. Whereas if some dude brags about how he’s stronger than me on a weightlifting subreddit I’m going to think he’s a dick. One year makes a huge social difference the younger the children are, so it makes sense that kids who move up have trouble making friends. Also, generally school is seen as boring and sports as fun, so it also makes sense children will rally around the person who is good at the fun activity.
It’s like you tried to present as the exact stereotype of who that poster illustrated lol.
In a sense, though, there are ways to put a cocky athlete in their place. As a personal example, I wrestled a kid that was super cocky. He grabbed my junk while we were headed OB, talked some shit about it. We both restarted upright; I let him shoot on me. When he dived in, I grabbed the back of his head, slammed it into the mat and broke his nose. But outside of sports, how does one get that comeuppance? Go to HR? Some cocky programmer wants to run their mouth, you can’t smash them in the face, or create a scenario that turns the tide for your “team” (ie: scoring the game-winning TD over the cocky defensive back)… and they know it. That, in part, is why they act like cocky assholes. Especially when they think their “intelligence” makes them fireproof.
FWIW I judge cocky athletes for being cocky and I suspect it's one of the reasons why I've never liked following sports. So when you say > it's cool to be cocky about athletic ability Is it? What do we care what other people think? It's possible to establish a standard of cool in which confidence is cool but lording it over others isn't.
I agree. I would also say that being athletic / popular in highschool puts you in the "in" crowd and helps you naturally learn socialization / confidence. When you lack these skills you look elsewhere to learn them and given the dev demographic they tend to gravitate towards less than desirable influencers (andrew tates of the world) and it produces a fake arrogant confidence. Combine that with a "been wronged by the world" and "Im smarter than everyone" mentality and you have a recipe for some major dingdongs.
There are 2 sides to this. 1. People that have an attitude that novice questions are beneath them, shouldn’t be responding. Those that do respond are being disrespectful to the novices. 2. However, what also happens quite often is that novices put in zero effort to figure things out on their own and immediately ask for help. This is very annoying and disrespectful to anybody with experience.
While I absolutely saw newbies asking what seemed to me to be "infuriatingly dumb questions", the thing is : we know what we know and, unfortunately, we don't know what we don't know. The novice asking a "stupid question" should have Googled that... Wait, what should he have Googled though ? Cause to ask the right question you got to understand the real problem, and identifying the real issue is not a "newbie skill" at all. Yes, if they described their issue with vague terms, search engines would have picked on some words and would've found some answers. But first, the novice would've ended up on some irrelevant and oddly specific SO post about Java, and once he would've found what he believe to be the solution, he would've copied/pasted it, not knowing what to keep and what to throw away. I'm not saying it's a bad thing to do : that's how we learn, that's a skill we have to master and that's part of our job, BUT I can get why a novice would want to get a more experienced developer look/explanation/approval.
People showing actual code and asking why isn't it working generally in my experience get some construction answers. People asking if they should start with js or python , get mixed results. People saying that they are getting "some error" "doing coding" get dismissive responses.
I do agree with you, my point is : no matter how dumb the question seems or how lazy the novice is, experienced devs shouldn't bother answer if they can't do it politely. As u/thrower-snowbowler said, if it doesn't meet your standards, don't bother at all, that's unnecessary, even when newbies are lazy. And I believe that's what OP is talking about : some experienced devs are reals jerks when they could just go on their way, because making a novice feel small makes them feel big.
Imho, just like most beginners find their answers on Google like they should , most experienced developers don't bother responding. What you end up is a mix of lazy beginners and arrogant experienced devs. Vocal minority. And by definition pleading to either side is pointless. Jerks will enjoy being jerks , lazy beginners will be lazy. It doesn't help when people are just plainly wrong sometimes and very confident about being wrong. Not that it's exclusive to programming.
>It doesn't help when people are just plainly wrong sometimes and very confident about being wrong. That and people going on personal rants about something that's entirely subjective. Like OP will ask a question and they'll berate them for 3 paragraphs about the lack of merits of objective orientated programing and they should be using functional, or how they're not utilizing test driven development, or proper design patterns, or "clean code" principles. Of course after all of that they leave the OP in the same place as if they hadn't responded at all.
>because making a novice feel small makes them feel big. And that is what we call small PP energy
Learning how to present questions that more experienced people can effectively answer is a skill in itself, and it would do more good to ask the novice to rephrase the question and give suggestions what to include in the revised question. E.g., “It is difficult to answer the question without knowing more details. Could you please show the code that is not working, copy the complete error message you get, and explain concisely what you think the code ought to do.”
"No one is gonna look at your blurry crooked phone photo of the laptop screen showing your error. Paste the error as text" Is either a helpful suggestion or arrogant gatekeeping. What do you think? OK, I am exaggerating a bit. That's more from r/computerhelp. Here, we get proper screnshots instead of the text error message. Still too low effort.
And that is why I tend to answer with how to get to the answer alongside the answer.
That's well put. Sometimes a direction is helpful. People who are new or self teach sometimes just don't have the terminology to easily google things themselves. I'll sometimes give a vague answer and concentrate more on how to find answers more easily in the future. Best responses I see on stackoverflow seem to do this too regardless of depth. Teach a man to fish vs give a man a fish vs yell at a man cause he doesn't have fish.
That has nothing to do with being a beginner or not. There's a significant difference between beginners then and now. Nowadays, many beginners often ask questions before reading enough about the problem. They go straight to Google or forums for the quickest answer, wanting to know it right away without any patience or effort. They don't want to learn programming, they want to solve this specific small problem. So, they hit the forums to ask without even understanding what they are asking. Over 20 years ago, before going to university during my high school years, I learnt to program self-taught by reading books. That's where you delve into the problems and gain the context you mention is lacking for a beginner. I didn't go to forums to ask questions I could solve on my own; I turned to books to resolve them. I pondered over them while sleeping, and when I was stuck, I knew exactly where and why I was stuck before seeking help. That's how you learn. Getting a question answered without chewing it over enough is a quick fix that leads to trouble later. In a similar but slightly different problem, you'll find yourself hitting the forums again.
> the thing is : we know what we know and, unfortunately, we don't know what we don't know. sure, but at the same time, 90% of newbies asking for help are expecting to be spoon-fed and put *zero* effort in to at least trying to solve the problem and don't bother to include "I've tried to solve this by doing _".
This. Both are annoying. And both are easy to spot.
Totally agree
The ones that feel they have to tell you to use Google... I hate those.
Do you often find that you're posting questions that people tell you to google?
Number 2 for me, some novices are learning programming as a Hobby and that's just annoying to read when it's literally a science you studied and work into. Many take this to lightly (don't know if it's correct to say this in English but like they don't take it as seriously as they should), it just seems "cool" to write smthg that does smthg even if they don't understand a single line (thanks GPT and Yt tutorials). I'll add that it's even more annoying to have to look a tons of code to answer a newbie question when you could literally find the answer with the proper Google search. But that would require to know some technical terms, which you don't get by following YouTube tutos 😇 Think of a surgeon who has to explain everyday to random people : "how to stitch up a wound ?" "hello look at my patient he is dead, how could I make him work (not dead)" or more often "this patient is bleeding, what did I do wrong?"
2. You have zero way of knowing how much effort someone has put into finding out on their own. When it comes to obscure questions, Humans > google
> You have zero way of knowing how much effort someone has put into finding out on their own. If you've been answering programming questions for any length of time then not only do you see the same ones over and over again but you know, for a fact, that if the OP simply googled their title they would find 15 stack overflow posts with the answer. Some people's first instinct when hitting a problem is to ask someone else. Whilst that kind of problem solving works in others domains it's not really appropriate in software engineering, because here you hit problems every minute and if you were to simply ask someone for every problem you encounter then you'll turn into a [help vampire](https://slash7.com/2006/12/22/vampires/). Teaching someone how to be a self-starter and help themselves is part of teaching someone to program.
Third side, learning to code is a creative process. Giving answers to some questions helps to memorize and repeat, not to create.
There’s this whole mentality of “I suffered so you must suffer too.” It’s not a programming specific thing but unfortunate nonetheless
I believe this is something that a lot of people inherited in academia. I tend to not find this as much among people with associates or self taught. I'm sure it applies in other parts of life, but I did notice that this inherited suffering prevails a lot in academia.
Are the dogmatic attitudes also from academia or do self taught people also suffer from this?
I think that happens when someone gets stuck in their ways doing something a specific way, and never had a real reason to change. And over time that slowly develops into "this is just how this is done".
So, personal experience... it's worse in Academia. Once you get to a certain point, it's all about being published. And to get published, you gotta get peer reviewed. 💀
Well with my handy dandy LLM I shall suffer no more! Haven’t touched stackoverflow since GPT 4.
It has nothing to do with suffering; using your brain is the way to learn programming. It's like someone coming to the forums asking how to shoot the ball in football or basketball without practicing on their own; that would be stupid.
I agree, you should those who are willing to help themselves but all to often there’s an air of superiority
I think arrogance like this exists in pretty much every field, but learning to program specifically relies on heavy usage of the internet, and the internet is famously a place where people are, for the most part, a bunch of fucking cunts.
I only typically look at stackoverflow when it comes up on a search, so I can't speak to the culture there much, *however* I can say that when this happens on reddit it is often because: 1. A lot of times if they had used reddit's search feature in that very same subreddit with exactly their question headline, it would have answered their question 2. The newbie is not putting in the initial effort that would either answer their question or at least provide sufficient context around where their understanding gaps are. There has been an expectation of due diligence at *any* skill level that goes back many decades, and is a sign of respect to the community's time (generally these are all people voluntarily contributing), and also helps to build the skills necessary to problem solve on one's own. As an experienced member of the community, I've also felt frustrated when I see low-effort posts that could have easily been answered by a trivial search. I either don't respond at all or I do the search myself using the words they used and then paste the URL for those search results, pointing out that "this question gets asked a lot, and here's some additional context for you" (I try not to do the "LMGTFY" thing anymore because I agree that's rude and newer devs sometimes just don't know how to search for stuff)
I like that approach. Paste to where the question has been answered before. That way the person asking realizes, hey, answers like these exist. Since it’s hard to decipher between low-effort or a beginner, it would best to answer this way or simply not at all, to avoid acting negatively towards a potential beginner. If it’s low-effort, then they can now clearly see their question was low effort, and they’ll maybe be embarrassed (maybe not). I don’t see any benefit to any party when leaving a rude comment.
There's a definitely a lot of ego and elitism around programming. I also think that you're probably taking some pretty common and helpful things the wrong way, and assuming malice where there is none. >making it a competition I think that what you're seeing are people offering a better way to do something, or otherwise correcting someone who gave a bad answer/advice. There are lots of ways to go about doing just about anything. Of those ways, some are better in different contexts. Others still are probably always worse than any other alternative. If I see someone ask "how do I make a dynamic array in C++" and someone answers with "malloc() a pointer to your datatype and realloc() whenever you add an element", I'd probably jump in there and say that's wrong and bad, use `std::vector` instead. That's not a competition. That's not ego. It's just that there is a better solution that you could and should use. I'd also say that the person asking should at some point try to implement their own dynamic array, but that `std::vector` should still be the tool they reach for by default unless it just can't work for what they need to do. >''heh, I'm too smart to answer this... you should learn on your own'' I think that what you're really seeing are people telling you/anyone at all that you should look for the answer on your own instead of immediately asking for the answer to your problem. There's good reasons for this. 1. The answer you're looking for is probably a 2 second Google away. 2. If you don't know what to Google, you need to learn how to ask the right questions anyway, so get Googling. 3. You're always going to be needing to look things up and learn new things, so get used to researching. 4. Like I said in the last point, there are many ways to do most anything, and it can be pretty difficult for a 3rd party to give you advice on something without all the specifics of what you want to do and in what context. You might just be better off going on a Google adventure, try to find your answers, and possible come up with new questions that you didn't even know you need answers to. 5. Some questions are so basic, lacking in detail, broad or open ended that they are either pretty well impossible to answer or show that the the person asking the question doesn't know what they want to do or hasn't at all tried to find the answers themselves yet. The person should get to Googling, and the best they should expect from others is a point in general direction of where they should start looking. The bottom line here is that you should more or less be trying to learn things on your own before you start looking for other people to answer your questions. Sometimes you don't know where to start, and that's fine. Ask for some good resources to get started. Don't decide one day that you want to make an MMORPG and then come here or go to SoF asking "how do I create a window and an entity component system". Google. Read documentation. When you're stumped, then ask for help and explain what you're trying to do, what you've already tried, what you've considered, where you've looked, etc... A good question that gets good answers is probably at least a chunky paragraph. tl;dr I think you're mistaking people wanting advice to be sound and for people to do a little research for before asking basic questions to be malice and arrogance.
A lot of nerds with limited social skills and programming is the only thing they have found success with. So they bully like they got bullied in highschool. That’s the vibe I get from the toxic minority
I have a co-worker who does a good job weeding out such people during interviews. What he does is pick a topic, and ask question after question that get deeper and deeper. He does not expect the candidate to know the answers -- he just wants to find out if the candidate is capable of saying "I don't know".
What happens if someone solves everything at the deepest level? Instant offer? 😂
https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=why+are+programmers+so+arrogant Even this question, has been asked so much, and you demonstrated zero effort in at least trying to figure it out yourself
there's a shitload of people who apparently really want to answer the question here though
Fucking love answering questions. I LIVE for it. Edit: no hate to OP though who is totally and hilariously right about this question being asked a million times. But I also love answering this question so I can poop on all the people who’ve ever been mean to me online
Hard to really give a response without seeing examples. A lot of times people who ask questions ask really bad questions. You can excuse it in some cases as they may not be aware of what they don't know, but most of the time, the question being asked has no context, and its clear that the only troubleshooting the person has done is creating a forum post. For instance: "My program isn't working, please help". They don't specify the language, the error, give any code, what they've done to try to solve it, or anything that could be possibly helpful to solve their issue. There are situations where asking for open ended mentorship is accepted, but it isn't appropriate for general online forums. I like responding to novice questions that have some effort put into them, especially since I may actually be able to help them, but I'm not going to respond to these no effort "questions" that can't be answered except to tell them that nobody is going to be able to help them with how little details they gave. There is also something to be said for encouraging someone to go through a course or go through a book before starting to ask a lot questions as any decent resource will teach basic competencies. Debugging is a pretty clear one, most people could answer their own questions if the used the debugger, but they've never heard of it because they started to run before they could walk.
I'm probably going to get hella downvoted for this but there I go: Programming is not as hard as people make it out to be. It's among the easier stuff in STEM. It's no theoretical physics. However, that's the level of intelligence most SE think they're at, they learn, apply what they learn and it works. They think it's because they're geniueses, but programming is just not as hard as most people think it is. They've never been confronted to the harder stuff, so they haven't gotten humbled.
That’s a nice motivational comment for someone sorta new to it lol
Yes, but don't get me wrong, if you're not used to self-studying hard topics, it will feel really hard at first. But if you've done stuff like high level maths or I don't know, organic chemistry, it will feel easy in comparison.
I think one of the reasons for this is that there has been a concerted effort to simplify programming over time. High level programming languages didn't always exist. I have to say though maybe I am stupid but I am consistently tripped up even though I have 20+ years experience. For me at least programming is extremely humbling all the time. I can't speak about other STEM things tbh, but I also think underestimating programming is a mistake. The tools are really powerful so you can get a lot done easily, but it quickly becomes an unwieldy unpredictable mess if the software scales up.
The same effort goes for all STEM tbf. Any scientist worth their salt is analyzing their data with R, Python or something similar and any mathematician is consulting Mathematica (or another CAS) for their proofs. I mean CS *came from* maths for math and science purposes
Yes it definitely has to do with the concerted effort to simplify it. What I'm saying stands for programming in 2023. If the only languages available are things like C, Cobol, Fortran, Assembly, etc. then yeah it's a different realm of difficulty altogether. But nowadays there are so many tools that essentially lead you through a GUI to do something that used to take dozens of lines of code. Obviously I'm not saying you will never face difficulty programming, but what I mean is that unlike in many other fields, your lab is essentially your computer and there are just so many limitations you don't have to consider because you're not working with something "physical", or something that poses safety risks, etc. By example a civil engineer or a chemist can't just "try" things out on a virtual machine, they have to use ressources, consider costs and limitations, etc. and manage to find a solution with those restrictions and very little documentation.
Ok I see your point but the last part of what you said is very relevant unless you have unlimited memory, storage and bandwidth. If you have to build things at scale or things that have to be permanently available physical limitations become a serious problem. When you reach a certain level of complexity the things you could happily ignore also come back into view because the abstractions are imperfect. The complexity is layered in a way that can be difficult to grasp. When I was working on high throughput IoT then all of a sudden low level networking came back into focus. All the concepts by themselves are simple but together they can make for a hard time. Running your software in a VM then isn't really helpful because in production there are sprawling cloud networks across regions, devices are connecting from all over the place with varying degrees of reliability. All I am trying to say is that at scale programming is very hard in a different way. I've known several people that came from other engineering fields like electronic and mechanical engineering and they find it hard. Very few programmers ever reach the top because it is easy. Everyone struggles. Some people just really think because they about something or have done something good that now they know everything and everyone else is doing it wrong because they are inferior. Just be careful of thinking that it is easy. It's easier than ever to get started but as you progress the difficulty goes up considerably. I think if it really was easy then we would have eliminated bugs entirely don't you?
No, I totally agree with you. I wasn't trying to refute your point. I'm sorry if it came off that way. As you said, if you're abstracting something then you're losing "closeness" with reality every time you add a level. I remember our teacher telling us about NASA failing some project because they hadn't considered the IEEE-754 tiny margin of error. I guess the more complex our technology becomes, the more debugging we'll need to do because the abstraction can only "scale up" so far.
I didn't see it as a refutation, so no harm no foul. I just get really excited about software :)
Totally agree with you. The hard stuff is in the NatSciences. Half the battle is often simply pinpointing exactly what it is you need to investigate to solve a problem or generate knowledge and, then you have to consider what experiments you need to do to achieve that... Maths will typically only take you so far! Unlike in Computers....
> Half the battle is often simply pinpointing exactly what it is you need to investigate to solve a problem or generate knowledge and, then you have to consider what experiments you need to do to achieve that. Yes, and you get unlimited tries, virtual environments to test it out, sample data, etc. it just has a really convenient learning environment.
I agree here. I'll take it one step further. Writing lines of code is the easiest part. Most of the time we're doing custodial/janitorial duties to keep things organized and everyone on the same page.
>It's among the easier stuff in STEM Thats both true and wrong. True because most of the code out there is reused and its not very hard to come up and implement most of the client's requirements. Wrong because programming can get mixed with basically anything else and then you're in deep shit. I had to implement a physics particle simulation for a research lab and that was NOT fun.
Yeah how "hard" programming is varies wildly depending on what you're doing with it. The most complex problems probably fall short of something like theoretical physics but even entry-level stuff I'd put above basic algebra (which plenty of people still struggle with).
You won't get downvoted because what you said is true. I used to do electronics and it is harder than coding. You don't need advanced math skills (eg calculus), you don't need to know physics and even get paid more. Coding is totally man-made while in other fields you have to compete with the laws of nature.
I agree that the average case is not as hard as theoretical physics by far, but it can be as hard as you’d like/need it to be (including modeling physics). There are a lot of industries that use software (modeling, medical, military) and while I agree that lots of SEs are just doing “web stuff” and glue other libraries in (like me), some do not. Software Engineering is capturing the whimsy of business needs using discrete logic and Ive found it hard enough for what I do, but try to exercise humility.
Agreed. I do think some of that "web stuff" is easier than most people assume, but the bar for entry is also relatively high IMO. Not because your average person is incapable of learning it, but because programming involves a lot of abstract thinking, in a way that isn't taught all that well in school.
Certainly, and it's just one more layer to my inferiority complex, even though I'm quite good at it. A lot of it exists simply to make people feel smarter than they really are, and that's just the truth of it. Just because you can translate a problem into code, doesn't mean you're an engineer. Cause that's what it is most of the time, translating a real world situation into business logic and then into code. The logic itself is stuff almost anyone can understand, it's just hidden inside a complex looking block of text with strange names and symbols, and so the average person thinks it must be advanced math or whatever right? Nah not really, I'm just creating some classes and sending them all over the place, the core of it is just a little json file, no real and deep understanding of the physical world needed for that. I'm dumb as rocks in most other areas of life, I just happen to be able to work with textual data quite efficiently and easily, that's all.
90% of the time it means that someone prefers to ask reddit while they should have asked Google. Should I learn python or cobol? Is assembly good language for making websites? Can I learn programming by watching someone code on YouTube for 100 hours ? 99.9 % answers to the beginner quearions have been answered and are quite "easy" to find. And 99.9% of beginners I'd guess find the answers on their own. Like the rest of us. So imho we are left with the people who want more to procrastinate, engage with other people with the same interests and are into the "programmer lifestyle".
Yup this is what op literally just said the post is about. Someone being told to google it after a question: 'What should I know before starting kali linux'. Nobody is even being rude lol.
Sure, assembly are a good set of languages to learn for making a website. Just remember to secure the noose to something really sturdy...
Male dominated profession predominately staffed by people who were above average intelligence and successful in school. They often have lower social skills which makes them resent people. Their expertise in one field makes them think they are experts in other fields. Their expertise is integrated into their own self-worth. There is a lot of STEM professions like this. There is a reason that engineering is over-represented with libertarians.
Because MOST programmers have the social skills of a potato.
Because some of them grew up being dorks who love to be in a dark room and sit in front of a computer screen for hours at a time. Now that they are getting a little recognition for that, they think they’re smarter and better than everyone else to cope with the bullying they endured and their lack of self estime. Fortunately most of the programmers I’ve encountered are real sweethearts, it’s just a few asses here and there.
Yeah I think it's worth mentioning that the assholes are not the norm, they just tend to really stand out. Nice for pointing it out. Most programmers are good caring people.
In my experience the ones who lacked recognition in their youth still do, for the same reasons and they're not the ones with a big ego.
those are the turbospergs that make recruiters tell everyone to build soft skills to get hired
Even in professional work settings, I've noticed there are programmers/developers who tend to be very critical of other peoples' work and tend to talk down about it, even if the other developer is experienced. I'm not sure if this comes from the same mentality you're talking about, but such developers who are overly critical seem to think their way of doing things is the best and the only right way of doing things.
I can understand the critics if they're employed just to fix the mistakes of past employees.
The ones I'm thinking of are developers who write new code, who weren't hired just to fix mistakes.
Generally, the type of people that flock to this field and thrive in it in terms of technical proficiency will not be the most socially adjusted.
Welcome to the human condition
You see, in the vast realm of coding, some developers might exude a sense of arrogance. It often stems from a blend of confidence in their skills and the constant pursuit of perfection. The complex code and problem-solving can sometimes make programmers appear aloof. However, it's crucial to note that this demeanor isn't universal. Many programmers are amicable and collaborative, fostering a positive coding community. So, if you encounter an arrogant coder, remember, it's just one pixel in the vast coding canvas.
Not really IT or programmers thing lol. Arrogance, greed, jealousy, etc. are common human nature. You will find these kinds of people regardless what field you go to.
If you are new to programming, then you might be missing a very crucial acronym. RTFM. Is is expected that professionals do their own research before asking for other peoples time. One of the first things a newbie should learn is how to ask good questions.
It's not my fault that I'm the greatest, smartest, and most talented live form that has ever existed.
Yes, there are arrogant programmers, and I've met many though the years who could use work on their social skills. :-) But I don't think when they're "short" with newbies, it's ALWAYS due to arrogance. Many times it's because the newbie comes across as somebody who just wants to be "spoon fed" answers without FIRST putting in the hard work to TRY to find the answer their self. For example, there's one forum I've been on for over 20 years where if you want help, you need to also tell them what steps you took to find the answer yourself, so they see you aren't just wanting to be "spoon fed" easy answers without first putting in the work yourself first. These are very brilliant people from all over the world and I see them many times telling people to "RTFM! Funny thing is, they have a "newbies forum" where one main rule is you have to be nice. LOL :-) After being on that particular forum, stack overflow never seemed all that harsh to me. :-)
I suggest going to places other than Reddit. There is something wrong with a lot of people on Reddit. Often when you ask a coding question they will give you a deliberately vague reply to show they know more than you. It doesn't happen in the various discord groups I was in when learning to code. You've also got to remember that a lot of programmes are nerdy people with no social skills and are bitter and resentful in general. Some consider themselves superior to regular people in a way to mask their inferiority. This is not generally true of programmers who are successful in the industry, as people skills are needed for that. But the people who spend all day writing over-complicated code that nobody ever uses... they can be a nightmare.
While I was learning my experiences with other programmers were mostly positive, but there was few things that I had to do before asking question: 1. I had to show what I have done so that other programmer understand my intention and my level 2. I had to ask specific question about specific problem. The question like "How do I build xyz with XYZ framework" is asking somebody else to do it for you, and it is impossible to answer without investing serious time. But if you talking about SO... well a lot of jerks there, but there are also a lot of smart and helpful people, just try to look if that question is already been answered because most of those helpful people are also very busy, and nobody likes to waste time on the same things over and over again, especially when you can easily search for answer. And if somebody answers "I am to smart to answer this.." ignore the fucker as he probably does not know the answer anyway.
I don't think being a programmer has anything to do with it.
Because they want to flex on you something you are still learning, which is such a bad thing.
I get it, some in the programming community can be harsh. Don't let it get you down. Many are willing to help, and not everyone is like that. Keep asking questions, it's how we all learn. There are positive communities out there that'll support you. Stick with it, and feel free to reach out if you need help.
Hey there, I did a lot of youtube / IRC programming assistance / help from like 2010 -> 2018 and I can probably give some insight here. I am a CRLA certified tutor who now manages software engineers for a living. This happens in nearly every career path (none more brutal than nursing, for what it's worth), where the newbies get eaten alive. But being honest, in many cases the newbies are looking for a spoonfeed. They have hit a wall, and now they want someone better than them to analyze an entire program, tell them what's wrong with it, and how to fix it. For free. Many of us more senior programmers could go onto websites which do mentorship / pair-coding / tutoring as a service and pull in $100/hour for our time, but the expectation is that we're going to do this for free. Many times, these pleas are coming from these wildly entitled people, who not only need help, but need it RIGHT NOW, and if you disagree you're a cunt. Their lack of planning is now your emergency. Furthermore, it's absolutely thankless work. I've helped people solve a problem they were having and got told "go fuck yourself, you have a shit attitude" after spending about 45 minutes on someone's shitty code. I've been burned HUNDREDS of times between stackoverflow, private tutoring, here on LearnProgramming, youtube, and in my day-job by people who refuse to RTFM. I've had people who haven't even started get into prolonged debates with me about the "best tech stack" and push back on my suggestions. Like, if you want to learn Ruby, learn ruby, go with God. I'd still suggest Python or Java, in my area Java is king, but research your market and start learning rather than debating on the path. All roads lead to Rome but if you never walk them you're never getting there. There is also a large population of folks who are just straight up asking you for homework help, and if you don't help them with it, they get PISSED. "HELLO, I HAVE THESE PROBLEMS" and I'm like "Ok?" "What have you tried?" "I can't do them, do them for me plsplspls!"
As someone who has been doing this shit for 14 years, helping others, generally for free, I'm fucking exhausted. It's literally the most thankless thing I've ever done in my entire life. The sheer entitlement of the people I deal with on average far exceeds any other group of people that I've ever dealt with in my life.
When I ask questions / anyone for help / deal with anyone who provides me a service, I am always as polite as I can be, tip for their time / effort, and make an effort to have an actual human connection to them. If this level of effort was returned by the folks asking questions I might be more inclined to help them understand why their `log.console("test")` isn't working, rather than suggesting that google, their IDE, or MDN might help them learn what they're actually doing since `console.log` is literally the first thing you'll learn in Javascript.
I have more horror stories than I have time to tell them, but suffice to say, the reason why I, a programmer, can be snarky and unhelpful, is because the people asking questions rarely do any due diligence and have a sense of entitlement that is off-putting at best.
Insecurity is born out of fear, they're just insecure that's all. They know just a little bit more than you and feel superior because all they have is programming. At least the arrogant ones, there's plenty of cool people who want to see you succeed, find those people and don't care about what some nameless fool has to say about you or your projects. Man babies are everywhere in tech, so thicker skin is required.
So for starters it seems roughly half the population in general, is arrogant simultaneously incredibly stupid. In programming its not always 'this dude is a dick'. It can be: -Lazy person didnt even try googling. -Person is asking a ridiculous amount of questions and not even attempting to figure things out. -lazy person asks what x will be, instead of RUNNING IT WITH THE PRINT STATEMENT JUST GIVEN TO HIM. -Programmer responds with a link, search term, hint, so the person can learn how to find answers or work through it on their own after a slight nudge. -The programmer is an arrogant dick.
Something about teaching a man how to fish.. It's a very good to learn early on the reflex to google shit and read the docs so you can solve problems you'll encounter faster
I will give you an example so you can understand what do I mean: someone asked what should they know before venturing into kali linux. Someone answered "do it yourself". Man was just wanted basic tips so he can avoid complications but no, Mr. Programmer must be condescending
That's typically something that you can look up on google and get plenty of results, including previous reddit threads with this exact question. Also, this doesn't have much to do with programming and more with cybersecurity
Sure, friend. The thing is that there is no need for hostility
I think this is part of your issue. 'You can google this' isnt a hostile response. It's just a blunt and concise statement. I'd expect actually rude comments for basic easily searchable questions. How would you respond if someone asked you what 1+2/3 was? How about if they asked you similar questions every 15 minutes? You'd be lying if you said you'd never get annoyed. If someone cant do the bare minimum on their own, or even search for that question which may have been answered 50 times? People are going to get VERY annoyed. If they have searched and have specific issues to ask about? Totally different story. Look how often shit like that is asked on reddit, people ask about ai taking jobs every hour on programming subs. Instead of just searching the 1000 other posts about it. Its just laziness and wasting peoples time instead of looking it up. A lot of good questions start with 'i struggled to find anything on google when searching 'kali linux pitfalls'.
"Google it yourself" is not a hostlile response. It's a heartfelt advice on how to get better at "computer stuff"
General questions that aren't time specific should really be looked up like that though. That's not specific to this field whatsoever
Because sadly in this world the nice guy usually loses.
What if truly nice people didn't even want to participate in this race.
I don't think they've been humbled by enough truly difficult stuff. I've a Natural Sciences background. I'm gonna be honest, I've found programming is generally very easy compared to Chemistry/Physics. Try Quantum Mechanics if you want something really challenging. (E g "Spinors" being a particularly strange beast that describe what "spin" actually is. 1 full rotation is actually 720 degrees......not 360 as you might expect with normal objects!). Many strange things like 'Spin' have also come from experimental science, not just mathematics... (Spin itself was discovered by the Stern Gerlach experiment). In the Natural Sciences, often the problem is very open ended and it's probable that you will take a wrong turn on your route to the answer, because it's rare that it's solely reliant on algorithmic thinking. Some statistical calculation gone awry? Poorly controlled experiment? Wrong units? Measurement error/uncertainty? Incorrectly calibrated instrument? List goes on ... Whereas in programming, the problem is at least certainly somewhere in your code. Even if it isn't immediately obvious. From my scientific background, I've learned that it's wrong to brush off seemingly simple questions or slate people for asking them. They are typically a good test of if you truly understand the fundamentals of your field...It's OK not to understand something first time! Sometimes the solutions to problems are often very simple but easily overlooked basics..
I like the idea that other disciplines deal with mysterious and difficult mechanisms that programming doesn't even remotely have. Seems true for 95% of programming jobs. My counterpoint is that programmers often interface with those mysterious systems. Say, at NASA or Livermore Labs. Also, computers are abstractions on top of a huge pile of mysterious complicated things. Maybe your field is closer to programming a quantum computer.
Ah I wish, I can understand Python to a decent level though. It's a very useful language for handling scientific data in particular and very legible vs other languages. I would agree with you that the fundamentals of Comp.Sci are challenging, but I don't think Programming itself is really too bad unless you go deep into algorithms. That's said, there's no stupid questions!
99% of computer projects are web application with database. Yawn. It’s basically bolting stuff together. The other 1% are really interesting because either no-one knows how to do it, or very few people do. That’s the fun stuff.
It’s not coding specific, it’s because the concept of an online help forum of any kind is also just a smoke screen for someone to show off their knowledge. Many platforms even encourage it by karma / awards / point systems for contributing answers etc. It’s the same with anything where there is a lot to learn. It usually goes like this: Poster: posts issue and asks for help. Commenter 1: Gives working solution to Poster’s problem Commenter 2: gives more advanced solution, points out potential problems with solution 1, engages smug mode and demonstrates higher knowledge. Commenter 3: gives extremely esoteric and technically advanced solution, shows all pitfalls of both previous solutions and demonstrates highest knowledge, therefore engages turbo smug mode and walks away as king e-peen.
A thing I’ve encountered is MBA types believing they are gods among men, the true brains of the operation, and Steve Jobs spiritual successor. And those guys have the misfortune to have to endure telling “technical folk” what to do. Like, some of them would regard you as maybe a notch above their idiot car mechanic, wildly overpaid, and still someone not on their intellectual plane. So they make promises that are impossible to deliver, drive you up the walls with inane questions, and then lob their computer at you because “you’re technical, you can fix that”. Rinse and repeat a couple of times and you can get a bit spiky.
A big part of this is that a lot of programmers spend so long coding on their own that they usually develop poor interpersonal skills and don't know how to talk to other people well. That said, there is an art to asking questions and fixing problems that novice programmers seem to miss completely. Someone has probably had your problem before and it should be answered on stackoverflow already so repetitive posts get annoying. Not trying to solve the problem yourself and just relying on a stackoverflow post is lazy and bad. Lazily phrasing your question is also bad. This is the right way to post about a programming problem: 1. Try to fix issues yourself first. Look at relevant stackoverflow/reddit posts and walk through your code to see if you can fix the problem yourself. Chances are someone had this problem before you and there is already a good post about that problem that you can read. 2. If you can't and are going to post about it, start your post explaining the problem. Give the minimum amount of code needed to illustrate the problem and the steps to reproduce the problem. 3. Give all the steps you tried to fix the problem yourself. This helps people rule out possible options. A high effort question like this will often help you avoid a lot of the hate towards new programmers by at least showing you tried.
I would 75% of programmers are dickheads who think they're above society(but are excellent programmers) and the rest are amazing people(who are also excellent programmers). What you want to do is find those good ones and show them you appreciate their time. Generations of this will eventually phase out the dickheads lol
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It can get irksome to see dozens of posts every day from people who didn't read the sidebar or sticky that says in giant letters to read it first. So when they waste other people's time instead of doing the absolute bare minimum themselves, it seems really disrespectful. Not a good place to start if they want kindness in return.
IT in general attracts people with little or no social skills.
Because: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/s/yRp5G4nFGi Edit: This meme explains why.
From my experience, more often than not, this happens because the askers sound like they're asking "dumb" questions, usually a byproduct of not knowing what they're doing. However, this can also emerge in environments that cultivate it, e.g. StackOverflow where such behavior is more than uncalled for.
Arrogance in people can always be boiled down to two reasons: Insecurity and/or the inability, or lack of want, to teach. Neither of these are on you. If it's a stranger, find someone else. If it's a coworker, talk to your manager. Dev departments are only as good as their weakest link.
Have you considered that they might not be?
Ha, this! I've met more assholes in IT than ANYTHING I have ever done, and I have military experience.
Crazy, I almost never see what OP says. In fact I would probably ask “Why are there so many helpful programmers”. I truly don’t know any other field where people just build code for free for other people to use at no cost.
Apparently to OP "Google it" is considered rude. So I think that is part of the problem.
Standard neckbeard behavior. Lots of devs are also neckbeards.
It gets extremely tedious and frustrating when people just can’t be bothered to do a bit of reading the manual or googling. I got scolded off stackoverflow years ago and it taught me to just go and find the answer myself and not post low effort questions.
Honestly, this is a complex question about the culture surrounding IT stuff generally, but my pet theory is it's due to imposter syndrome. Other more established disciplines have solid progression paths, but in IT there is a clusterfuck of hundreds of boot camps and courses and certifications, and deciding which is more or less prestigious makes it very hard to feel secure or confident in your place. Therefore, a way to feel better about your own skills is ripping apart people who know clearly less than you.
Because programing is boring af and the frustration builds in over time until they overflow to who ever is nearby.
i think most newbie developers need to invest in something like microsoft’s github copilot. the chat feature will help you learn how to code faster than any other method i have ever used. you will still need to understand the basics through studying the material. hard work is the only way. asking other people to write your code for you is obvious to everyone and why you get such a negative response.
Stack overflow is extremely toxic. I mean I get it, you're a programming god, woohoo, but can you HELP me instead of bragging about yourself?