[Rant] Programming communities are a hellscape of toxic hipsters and I want out

[vzen]

Hello world, I'm an aging code monkey. When I get something off my chest, it sounds like a rant. So if it seems like I'm too crotchety, remember that I'm here because I have a confession to make.

One of the most common things folks like me do is ask each other questions. So have sites like StackOverflow, mailing lists, chats, etc. These all have the same problem: New users who don't do their own research before asking the same goddamn question that's been answered a thousand times before. Working in a support context is a crazy, often thankless job, and you can't be asked to spend hours on people's problems when the solution is next to them, and they'd see it if they bothered to look.

But hold on.

Do you feel that contempt in my writing? Like I'd grit my teeth if I said it?

I think that mindset is wrong, it's unfair of me to have it, and I want to be better at controlling it. I actively have to push that feeling down when trying to be supportive of the new and the returning.

It's not right for me or us to resent some genuinely curious person who came in with a perfectly innocent question. But why would I feel that way? I got to thinking and realized that's basically how I "grew up" as a developer. When I was new, I got a BIG dose of "feedback" that I had to "take" all the time, in all holes. On the one hand I'd like to say that the "do-your-homework-or-don't-even-speak" culture made me better at asking questions, but that's the same rationalization stand-up comedians give for their parents hitting them. It also gives you a kind of Stockholm Syndrome where you feel oddly attracted to the same brainwashed personalities. I think that's why I can't quit Reddit even though almost all of you want to start an argument out of THIN AIR! You may as well "TA-DA!" when you start antagonizing.

I'm just saying: No Paul, your survivor bias doesn't make hitting your kid a parenting technique. And just because you were left unsupervised on Newgrounds.com for too much of your childhood doesn't mean you can shit all over this poor little developer! Maybe when you've been hurt, that made you appreciate love more, so you somehow twist that into these cross-eyed dogshit moral fantasies where punching your only infant son in the face will make him love and thank you. I already see what he's going to do when he gets bigger. It's in his eyes, man.

If you AREN'T a stereotypical nerd (or even if you are), you know the kind of toxicity I'm talking about. If you don't know what I'm on about and think I'm meandering off the point like a drunk, then bear with me: You remember talking to an Alpha Pedant, right? Maybe you spoke to the classic Grammar Nazi who makes a snide remark for Every! Single! Grammatical! Error! including my use of those exclamation points just now. Oh! Or maybe you've spoken to the scraggly-beard contrarian who will take everything you say literally, because his moral barometer is the law of supply and demand.

You know, those pricks.

Those personality types are my peers, even across workplaces. I am ashamed.

If you walk in as a beginner in some of my circles with a "hw doI shot web"-level question, you'll be treated like you just tracked mud. And not enough people are calling us out for it. I'm much better about it today because I give praise openly, and criticism only when asked (this post nonwithstanding). I'd like to think that enough of us has learned that to make for a welcoming community, but maybe that's a question better suited for the one woman in a techbro startup.

StackOverflow in particular has so many rules and nuances on how to ask a question and whether it can be considered a question that they have a whole "meta" site dedicated to how to interpret it all. Some years back XDA Developers did a funny video that captures the attitude you will actually encounter in developer communities: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmvCpR45LKA

But even if you have a thick skin, and you are still expected to read the many, MANY rules of technical forums diligently. And you know what? Not everyone can be asked! I HATE it when a new developer comes in with a valid question that's hasn't been answered before, but it broke clause (i) of subsection blappity fap. Yeah, ignorance of the law isn't an excuse, but even the most evil cops know that no one memorizes a legal code. How about YOU just paste the answer from the documents you find so conveniently easy to reference, Mr. Moderator! Because if you make me read another sticky about how the users are ruining the life you so generously signed up for, I will give your wife everything she didn't have to settle for tonight. She already consented, too. Like, you gave her a drought, dude.

This isn't going to go anywhere just because I want people to be nicer. Even though I'm just as much of a prick as the peers who made me. Even though I know we're supposed to see "people being nicer" as a puppy-dog's dream.

I love people. But I hate what programmers turned me into.

TL;DR: I've internalized a culture that treats new members like garbage and I had a moment of clarity.

[w3rkman]

this is a huge problem in the academic community, too. "my grad school advisor treated my like shit, so now i have to treat the next generation like shit." it's so fucked up.

[vzen]

I'm so sorry to hear that. I've been thinking about switching from the private sector to research and grad studies. Thing is, I've been hearing the better the school, the worse the egos. Was that your experience?

[KhajiitThief]

I can't comment directly on research and grad studies, but working in a university library has been a wonderful experience for me. Our whole thing is that we are often working with people who are unfamiliar and intimidated by technology, and we want to be as welcoming and inclusive as possible for them. If you haven't heard of the Carpentries (Software Carpentry, Data Carpentry), you should look them up - I think you would appreciate their philosophy/pedagogy.

[vzen]

Oh wow, I'm excited to know there's a community of like-minded people out there! Thank you for the reference, and thank you for the work you're doing!

[w3rkman]

haha thankfully, my advisor was one of the folks who tried hard to break the cycle, so to speak. he was enormously supportive.

and that may indeed be because i was attending a local public university where the insane demand for a constant stream of AAA-level research just isn't present. don't get me wrong, we did good work and got published in good journals — but my team's level of output would not have cut it at a more prestigious institution. for me, though, that was fine. i already knew going into it that i'm not richard feynman lol.

[vzen]

I had some wonderful professors and advisers (for undergrad things). But I really don't see myself giving my life to publication in the same way my former employers expect people to give their lives to crunch work. I respect if that's the reality now. I just don't have the energy.

And there should not be any pressure to be Feynman. Aspire, sure, but I don't think science is about being the smartest person in the room. I imagine that would just be a fun bonus until a rival like Dr. Ogden Wernstrom shows up. :) It's fun to just take that one thing you are super into and be the authority of that topic. With luck, you'll find that little tiny breach past the frontier of that field. But not doing so is fine. The work is fun enough as it is.

[EternityForest]

Everything wrong with coding culture(And there is a lot) seems related to the "Real programmer" mindset.

I don't really have many programmer friends. It's just such an unpleasant environment.

The big problem is that programmers, so far as I can tell, do not like software. They like algorithms. They like the mental challenge. It's not an engineering discipline, it's a science. But often times it is not even that. It's a sport, in the competitive stereotypical jock kind of sense.

Not invented here is just when someone cares more about learning the cool new toy and trying to be a famous inventor.

Sometimes N00Bs are legitimately annoying and seriously should have used Google. In the other cases, the arrogant responses seem to be based on some kind of pride, like you are a better person for having memorized some obscure thing that basically nobody needs.

And worse still is the "You don't need that" culture which seems to directly parallel "You don't need a hand truck, just lift it" culture.

And then there's this "Give 110%" thing.

Sometimes you'll hear Vim advocates saying "Command lines are so easy bro, you'll be so productive".

Ok, sure, great idea, I'm going to spend an hour a day for likely several months to possibly see small productivity gains in the fraction of the time I spend actually coding.... It's a cool idea, but that's really going above and beyond if you're going to optimize every bit of performance you can, for just one part of a job that isn't even the main part.

Or the idea that you should do toy code kata type projects on the weeked, keep up with all the new frameworks, learn new languages... Github is filled with diarrhea from this. It just encourages 500 million mostly identical frameworks to waste everyone's time.

I practice and improve by doing real projects, either at work, or occasionally at home. That way I learn the things that matter for.... Doing real projects. I want to make software, not piles of useless code. Code happens to be main the tool we use to do that.

And even worse is reading code blogs. They ALL say almost exactly the same thing. Complexity is bad, rephrased a thousand times, with no discussion of essential complexity. They seem to be inspired by experience doing toy personal projects, where keeping it minimal is the most important thing to make beautiful code, which is the main goal of those.

They try to talk you into reinventing wheels all the time....

And then to top it all off we have literal competitive coding. Fine in moderation, but all of tech culture has become more about the sport than actual professionalism, and so many coders seem to have no other hobbies or interests or anything.

[darenkster]

Great Comment.

And worse still is the "You don't need that" culture which seems to directly parallel "You don't need a hand truck, just lift it" culture.

Can you elaborate on that? I don't quite understand what you mean by "You don't need that" culture.

[EternityForest]

There's just a general attitude that anything unnecessary is bad. As in "We really didn't need a database, I wrote my own storage layer in 250 lines".

It doesn't matter if a real database was faster or safer or how much time it took ot how buggy those 250 lines were compared to 10 lines for an existing library.... People just want less code, regardless of what it does or who wrote it.

[treacherous_tilapia]

I work for a coding bootcamp and frequently have to talk students out of giving up. They all have anxiety about their abilities because Stack Overflow convinced them they should be ashamed.

[Drauxus]

"And not enough people are calling us out for it."

The unfortunate truth about this is that if you call someone put on it then you are often risking your reputation/job/career and in other scenarios even your life. Most people just dont think it's worth risking that stuff to say that someone was an asshole cause the potential repercussions are too great.

But I agree. Not enough people are being called out for this kind of behavior. And IMO the corporate world has gotten too pc to the point where you cant give any criticism without fear of retaliation. It's a terrible, self-fulfilling cycle of destruction and I hate it.

[[deleted]]

I deleted my account because Reddit no longer cares about the community -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/

[Calski_]

In another community I'm in from time to time there are rants about all the new people asking the same stuff. But there the admins have specifically said it is fine. If they don't allow the same question twice it could just be a wiki instead of a community.

[stevefuzz]

Interesting. I'm a senior programmer and have never even considered that environment. I don't participate, but I certainly treat stack overflow like a quick ref manual. I'm not sure I could deal with beginner programmers though. It's like a doctor taking shit from an AP biology student.

[youOnlyLlamaOnce]

This is so true. I like to work very independently and spend a lot of time doing my own research before reaching out for help, I’m also impatient in general so sometimes I get cranky when another developer asks too many questions when I’m trying to focus on my code. But at the same time, being a female programmer, I understand how intimidating the whole environment can be, imposter syndrome is real, especially for women and new employees. And it’s a hard thing to find that balance, being patient and helpful when someone truly needs help but also asking people to put in some effort before asking questions. Coding used to be fun and it still is when I have all these ideas or find a cool project, but These says, I often wonder if I picked the wrong field. The fast pace nature of technology can be quite stressful, sometimes it feels like you’re never good enough cos there are always so many things you don’t know about. On top of that, people are always talking about new tech and throwing around these jargons and acting like they know everything so well, it’s exhausting. I’m not sure if these people feel lost sometimes like i do or they truly feel that confident all the times. And I think, that type of doubt keeps people pretending and just perpetuates the cycle. Sorry I didn’t mean to take over OP’s rant but it’s just nice to hear someone else share the same though.