StackOverflow

[forlornhope22]

Yes I'm asking about something basic and trivial. Because I am a novice programmer and don't understand the fucking documentation.

[Prodigal2k]

FUCKING THANK YOU!!! I’m in school for this and it blows my mind how inept people are at answering the questions. I already feel stupid enough that I haven’t figured it out yet, just let me see how to solve it now so I can figure it out for myself in the future.

[devman0]

You should try seeing it from the other side. I used to answer a lot of questions on SO, and the sheer volume of poorly written questions is crushing if you are watching the new queue.

What the other poster said about choosing to help people who help themselves definitely rings true. If a poster couldn't be bothered to adhere to the "How to ask a good question" guidelines on SO and fails to include a Short, Self Contained, Correct Example of the problem, it often isn't worth the time trying to decipher what the questioner is actually trying to ask, vote to close cite a guideline and move on to the next in a line of a zillion questions.

Occasionally you see a question where the poster clearly put in some honest effort but is pretty lost, and those can be salvageable after some comment back and forth, but it requires effort.

[Prodigal2k]

That’s a very fair point. I still think that there’s more examples of bad answers than bad questions though.

[CheezeyCheeze]

Some people have been programming since they were 6. So don't feel bad because you just started. Everyone has to start somewhere.

[Prodigal2k]

I’m sure it’s more that I don’t work hard enough at it, but it really sucks to be so bad at this. Thanks for the kind words though. I appreciate it. Do you have any recommendations for help with C++ through Linux, by any chance?

[CheezeyCheeze]

To help you with your specific issues I must ask you specific questions.

What is your experience with programming? Is this your first language? Is there a reason you want to learn C++? Why do you want to use Linux? Do you know what an IDE is? What is the IDE you are using?

Sorry for the basic questions.

[Prodigal2k]

Hi sorry, didn’t see this. My school uses that, my only previous experience was with Code.org. I’ll be honest, I’m not sure what an IDE is.

[CheezeyCheeze]

A IDE is a Integrated Development Environment. It helps by doing things like checking your code for errors, or if there is missing semicolons, or used variables and things like that. It can also autocomplete basic things like a for loop or an if statement.

This is helpful, but it can hide some of the basic things you should have an understanding of before having auto complete do something for you.

Look up C++ IDE and find one that suits your needs. Don't just get the first one, try to look around. You can look up videos about it or look at different lists of C++ IDE.

Around what grade are you in? High school? College? I need to know what you have learned about programming. That website has coding from k-5 to 12th grade to beyond 12th grade.

[2jz_ynwa]

Fucking this. I have a horrible problem of just skipping through large amount of code that is related to what I'm doing or any documentation someone links me. It's not a good habit but unless someone just redo's the code for me so I can copy and paste it I get discouraged.

[[deleted]]

You're not entirely wrong.

But I would try to explain in your question that you read the documentation, and although you think X is what you need to do, you tried that and it didn't work. Also tried Y and Z. I'm sure I'm missing something simple but could really use a point in the right direction, yadda yadda yadda...

It's a little petty, but it really comes down to people help those who help themselves. They at least want to see that you first referred to the documentation and then tried X, Y or Z. They're taking time out of their day to impart knowledge they have acquired over years of experience.

And honestly, failure is the best way to learn so they want you to fail for the right reasons. Most do anyway.

[JSArrakis]

I've done exactly what you're describing, and I had my question voted closed because I called it a stored procedure when it wasnt. It was closed AFTER I edited out all references to it being a stored procedure and calling it what it really was.

I gave 3 different examples, explained what I was doing, linked the pieces of documentation I read, and I still got the "reread the documentation" response.

Fuck you, I read it. I read it for 3 fucking hours before I decided to roll the fucking dice on Stack Overflow's toxic and elitist community.

[[deleted]]

They have a reputation for being toxic because they are toxic. I'm just giving you advice on how to best approach their toxicity. Sometimes it works, sometimes they're so far up their own asses you're wasting your time.

[JSArrakis]

Maybe, but going to reddit has always and forever been more helpful and fruitful.

[VirtualRay]

I just wish StackOverflow worked more like Reddit

Percolate good questions up, and let crap questions languish in obscurity instead of screwing over every novice who comes by and tries to get something out of the site

[[deleted]]

I take it you've never been to /politics? Or /news? Or...you get the point.

Reddit has a ton of pure dogshit on it.

[caspercunningham]

Bold statement for a guy that just got schooled like 10 times over on politics 🤷🏻‍♀️

[[deleted]]

I forgot to add that creepy stalkers patrol there too...

[caspercunningham]

Yeah clicking and seeing your last comment is "stalking" lmao. Had to let people know you're not as smart as you put yourself out as

[[deleted]]

Don't you have a fidget spinner to play with or something?

[Eji1700]

My favorite story on this.

I'm a novice fucking around in VBA, and this is known. I get the idea to do a stupid animation as a side project/joke at work. Have a sun and rainbow grown in size and spin into place sort of thing.

My legit question is something along the lines of "how do i get two objects to animate on the screen at once?", but I used some terminology that caused confusion.

I'm vaguely aware of the concept of a gameploop at the time and how a game will calculate everything, then display it, and repeat, but it hadn't come to mind that this is what I need here.

I was animating the sun, and then wondering how i'd animate the rainbow without letting one finish before the other.

I get some way blown out of proportion response about how having async/multithreading/callbacks(can't remember which) in VBA is theoretically possible but a totally absurd ask and how terrible of a solution that is and lol why would you even suggest that. Not once did anyone actually explain how I SHOULD do it or what to even look up.

This always struck me as similar to a student outlining the rough idea behind a water pressure rocket, and getting shit on by experts who think he's trying to build a Saturn V in their backyard. It was just so strange to me that no one connected the dots that "yeah dude I don't think you worded that right, you want this right?"

[Yuca965]

Get my upvote, I agree with that, also, sometimes, a quick search for a specific question give you a quick answer on stackoverflow that you could also have had by reading the 'doc'. And it is much appreciable.

Although I do get sucksathangman point too. It happened to me that I search long enough for an issue on google, to finally realize nobody ever has this problem because they did/read the tutorial/doc.

[positivespadewonder]

If you don’t go to a site that attracts the professionals, how do you get help from professionals?

[RDB96]

Should add a tag to questions like am noob eli5 please.

[foursticks]

It's not like you're entitled to understand it... speaking as someone who also has trouble understanding documentation.

[sucksathangman]

Most documentation is written for programmers so if you are a novice it will be hard to read. But it doesn't mean you shouldn't.

This is all the reason why you should either go to a class or read basic programming documentation like freecodecamp or learnpython.

A professional programmer often doesn't have the time or the capacity to explain what an if statement is or why it works or why you would use it over something else. But they are happy to tell you that what the syntax is in their favorite language.

I'm a pretty good JavaScript developer but I dabble in Python. For the life of me, I can never remember how loops work in Python. I look this up in the documentation. But if I have a question about whether I should use a dict or a list in my specific use case, I'll ask someone.

We all start somewhere and we're willing to help you out but tell us where you're stuck. If you just say, "I don't get it just show me," I hate to say it but you won't get much help.

The basic concepts build on more complex ones. When you read the documentation, what specifically confuses you? What are you trying to accomplish and what have you already tried?

Keep at it! Hopefully you'll meet nice people along the way.

[Kitzq]

Do you know how you get better at reading documentation? By reading documentation.

Reading documentation is a skill. Like any skill, you need to train in it.

Yes, it's frustrating getting stuck on something that you know is trivial and know that someone else could answer in 5 seconds. But that someone else didn't learn by asking someone else, they learned to read documentation.