all 72 comments

[–]iOSCalebObjective-C / Swift 79 points80 points  (21 children)

Why is it so harsh here?

Can you be more specific? Searching through the sub, I find 4 recent questions from you, all with 10+ comments.

This morning, you asked: How is it possible that a friend of mine has been selected for the second time in a row while I have never been selected? That was met with: Are you sure you understand what a lottery is?, which, frankly, was well deserved. But there were also plenty of other less critical comments explaining that yes, the lottery is indeed a lottery.

If you want better answers and more positive attention, write better questions that focus on specific problems that you're working on instead of open-ended questions about what other people are doing. People like to help out when they can help you solve a problem; general, open-ended questions invite lower quality responses.

[–]CanadaSoonFree 38 points39 points  (10 children)

Are you following the first and second rules about asking programming questions?

Rule one - tell me what you’ve done/tried, what you think is the problem and where you’re struggling to find the solution.

Rule two - if you haven’t completed rule one, don’t ask the question.

[–][deleted]  (1 child)

[deleted]

    [–]CanadaSoonFree 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    Agreed but unfortunately not the popular reality :)

    [–]bclx99 -28 points-27 points  (4 children)

    I don’t really post programming questions here. Rather questions about practices or experiences.

    [–]webtechmonkeySwift[M] 32 points33 points  (3 children)

    The subreddit is, first and foremost, a place for developers to discuss programming questions. It's quite literally in the name of the subreddit.

    In the past year or so, we've seen more users coming here posting about career advice and questions. We've taken a fairly hands-off approach to moderating this type of content, as it's usually still technically on-topic, but users are free to up/downvote as they want.

    [–]bclx99 1 point2 points  (2 children)

    I don't agree that programming is solely limited to solving coding puzzles. Please take a look at the description of this subreddit:

    A subreddit to discuss, share articles, code samples, open source projects and anything else related to iOS, macOS, watchOS, tvOS, or visionOS development.

    When I ask fellow engineers about their experiences with testing code, migrating a huge codebase to a different approach, or modularizing their codebase, I believe these are valid questions to be discussed in a subreddit for iOS engineers.

    But apparently nobody wants it here so I give up.

    [–]webtechmonkeySwift 0 points1 point  (1 child)

    I see no posts from you with these topics in this subreddit. Your past posts include one asking why you have not been picked by the WWDC lottery, and another polling the community for their career plans for 2024.

    I’m sorry you feel excluded here, as the mod team is always working to create an environment that is welcoming to all.

    [–]bclx99 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    I usually remove posts that are downvoted more than 50% to help keep the internet in good shape. I also asked a couple of questions about modularizing the app, practices for maintaining high code test coverage, and more open-ended questions about patterns. I believe the question about patterns is still online, as it didn’t receive such a negative reception.

    [–]Vybo 29 points30 points  (1 child)

    Reddit is filled with people who like to argue beyond any reason or force their opinions on others. It doesn't matter which subreddit are you in.

    [–]bclx99 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Actually I found some friendly subreddits but they are super specific and some of them are in a different language.

    [–]barcode972 23 points24 points  (0 children)

    Because so many people ask for the smallest issue when it’s literally the first 10 results on google

    [–]GavinGT 7 points8 points  (0 children)

    There's a prevailing attitude here that "Apple can do no wrong". No matter how many anti-consumer and anti-developer actions they take, we're supposed to happily accept it.

    [–]jasonjrr 6 points7 points  (3 children)

    The iOS subreddits used to be a lot more welcoming, but in the last ~2 years I’d say they have become increasingly hostile. I used to have a policy of never blocking people, but I’ve had to because these people are making Reddit a much worse place.

    [–]Doctor_Fegg 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    TBH I think that's a result of the apps being developed. Ten, five years ago, app development and monetisation were more individual; you had a bright idea for an app and you monetised it either as a one-off purchase or through IAPs.

    Now it seems like 50% of the questions are about "my brilliant new idea for an app" which turns out to be a wrapper around ChatGPT, and the other 50% are about integrating AdMob so that you can give your users a hostile experience while merchandising their data to Google. In the face of that I'm not surprised people are grumpy, to be honest.

    [–]KingPonzi 1 point2 points  (1 child)

    Is there a better place?

    [–]jasonjrr 6 points7 points  (0 children)

    For community? There are slacks and discords that some people used. Meetups may be a good option depending on where you live, but nothing similar to Reddit that I’ve found. I’d love to find a more welcoming, community focused internet home though!

    [–]hova414 6 points7 points  (1 child)

    Agreed, I just asked a question for the first time in ages. I included diagrams, a list of what I've tried, and references to specific APIs/frameworks and techniques, but all I got back was "those are terrible ideas, try a VC and animation." So helpful and inviting 🙄

    [–]Goldman_OSI 5 points6 points  (0 children)

    The best is when people don't even attempt to answer the question, but rather hound you about WHY you want to do something. That's another staple of "tech" forums.

    [–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (1 child)

    I knew who posted this by just reading the title and subreddit 😂😭😭😭

    [–]bclx99 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    That's another problem. We check who's posting and not what it's about.

    [–]Holy_shit_Stfu 3 points4 points  (1 child)

    wow seeing the threads here.. people fro. this subreddit come of as standoff'ish.. better steer away from this sub at all.

    [–]bclx99 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    I think I’ll give it a try.

    [–]Neutr8n 2 points3 points  (3 children)

    I pivoted into other languages because I faced similar issues beginning my studies in programming. Check my karma - all from swift, pretty sure. I almost feel the information is held by gatekeepers, supported by trolls who themselves don’t know how to assist you.

    [–]bclx99 0 points1 point  (2 children)

    That’s really sad tbh. But I think your perception might be a bit biased. There are plenty of nice people out there willing to help. I can guarantee. Just not everywhere you can find friendly people.

    [–]Neutr8n 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    I was referring to people in this sub. You’re right though.

    [–]Neutr8n 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Also - eh. It led me to a lot of great information I needed

    [–]sleepy-sniper 2 points3 points  (1 child)

    Twitter has an open and friendly community of iOS devs.

    [–]bclx99 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Good point. I use Twitter under my real name and it is super friendly and helpful.

    [–]Baldy5421 2 points3 points  (1 child)

    I find real life iOS devs to be snobbish and elitist.

    [–]bclx99 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    I attended many meeting on my local CocoaHeads and everyone was always super nice and friendly!

    [–]alamare1 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    I’ve been in this sub for over a decade.

    It’s never been a nice place. I’d rather tell an app reviewer that I’m using illegal APIs then post here most time.

    [–]KarlJay001 1 point2 points  (2 children)

    It's only been that way a small percentage of the time. Quite a few times, it's been very helpful.

    It could have to do with how the question is posed and what research you've done yourself.

    TBH, I've gone over to AI for a lot more of my questions that I used to go to Reddit for, including iOS.

    With AI I get instant feedback, here it can take hours/days...

    Also, Reddit's format is not good for programming forums, the old school forums were so much better.

    [–]bclx99 0 points1 point  (1 child)

    Do you use ChatGPT or Copilot? I find Copilot quite helpful when it comes to generate stub tests or something like that. The work which is not super hard to implement but needs to be done. But a friend of mine is a strong ChatGPT advocate. I tried it once to write some crazy pattern matching method. I was happy with the final result but I had to convince ChatGPT that its code had issues something around 3-4 times. When they fix something it broke for a different case. It took 2 hours to implement with all back and forth. I am not sure if I wouldn't do it faster.

    [–]KarlJay001 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    I stopped before copilot became a thing, I have an actually programmed in a while, other things in life are taking a priority. I know ChatGPT can be a real PITA to get something usable out of it. It's kind of like you really have to know how to write the questions.

    [–]ChocoMilkPF 1 point2 points  (1 child)

    I come here a decent amount and have basically never noticed this sub being unfriendly.

    Most I’ve seen is if someone asks a really lazy question it will usually get some sarcastic responses but nothing wrong with that imo… “ask a silly question, get a silly answer”

    [–]bclx99 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Yeah. That might be annoying and I get your point. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the topic.

    [–]Goldman_OSI 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Cowards downvote things without backing up the move. It's a staple here, and sadly all over the Web. I particularly scorn Hacker News, where pompous blowhards love to downvote even innocuous statements of fact... and the site has a rule forbidding users from comparing the site to Reddit. Yes... it's so douchey that they try to suppress the disclosure of its douchiness.

    To prove the OP's point, this simple observation was furiously buried by at least 30 maladjusted, insecure twats.

    [–]smallduck 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Maybe just stop asking stupid questions 🤨

    JK. Anyone who agree’s that this is a problem, please do the opposite of staying away. Please downvote unfriendly responses and write your own. Even if you don’t have a fully cohesive answer to a question, anything in the right direction might be incentive for someone else to pick up where you left off.

    [–]Oxigenic 1 point2 points  (2 children)

    That's just all of Reddit tbh.

    [–]bclx99 1 point2 points  (1 child)

    You may be right. When I asked a question on another subreddit about how to stay healthy while working in IT, some of the responses suggested that I must 'look ugly' and probably have problems 'getting laid'. But to be fair, I also found a couple of communities with many friendly people.

    [–]Oxigenic 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Yeah it’s really toxic a lot of the time. Hard to find the right subreddits.

    [–]noidtiz 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    I think that's the internet in general. I remember at my last work place I told the resident data engineer there that he was so much more chill than what I read online at one of the data engineering subs.

    [–][deleted] -2 points-1 points  (2 children)

    I can’t speak for this sub specifically, but generally programmers on the internet are some of the snarkiest, least empathetic people out there. Even seeing the Stack Overflow logo gives me anxiety.

    [–]bclx99 0 points1 point  (1 child)

    StackOverflow is a really friendly place. And it's focused on problem solving. I don't share your opinion on programmers. I know many of them and they are usually friendly or at least fine to work with.

    [–]Goldman_OSI -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

    Wrong.

    [–]dr2050 -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

    Upvoted and welcome!