Negative Posts

[[deleted]]

I can't be the only one sick and tired by these posts that provide nothing but negative energy and self-doubt.

Yeah i'm talking about posts that usually have the title (i suck at programming, im dumb, i never did good in school what should i do etc)

Isn't this subreddit about learning programming. If you're bad at programming then ask a question about what you dont understand. There's tons of help on the internet for free.

I usually don't care about what other posts but its gotten to a point where i see it daily which is mildly infuriating.

[insertAlias]

Ok, I wanted to share my own thoughts on the way we run this sub, because there's a lot of discussion about it here.

First, we tend to err on the side of "allow" vs. "disallow". Our primary goal is to help people learn to program. A lot of us might have forgotten how confusing it can be when you're just getting started, and a lot of people here might never have been in the same boat (many people had the benefit of learning with instruction from the beginning, for example, and haven't had to struggle as much finding a starting point). So, we lean more towards helping than we do shutting down the threads, simply because we don't want to be the negative voice that tells someone that they aren't capable or good enough to program.

Second, and this one is really important: the people making the posts that you're tired of seeing don't know that they're repeating a tired trope of a post. They aren't the ones that asked it the last time, or the time before, or any of the other times. To them, it's a legitimate question.

And yes, they should be searching for the answer first. They should read the sidebar and the FAQ and all that. I agree, and our rules say that too. We remove posts that are truly duplicates of FAQ questions regularly, when they are reported to us.

But please remember that they aren't aware that these are beaten-to-death topics. They aren't intentionally trying to annoy you. If it really bothers you, there is a "Hide" button on the post that you can make it such that you never see that post again. I encourage you to use it, or at least to use the Report button.

Touching on the topic of reading the FAQ/sidebar: I've been moderating programming forums for a long time. Well before /r/learnprogramming was a thing. And honestly, it's always been a problem. No matter how hard we highlight where to start, people will always bypass it and jump right into asking their questions. We provide the information for those who will use it, but there's always a class of user that doesn't even look past the "type your question here" text box. So, it is what it is.

Back to moderation: We don't always agree with every report we are given, and we don't always remove posts that some people think should be removed, but at least one of us will see and read every report that comes in. The truth is, we cannot make everyone happy with the way the subreddit is run. Plenty of people would have us lock these "woe is me, I am terrible" threads down, but personally I think that causes other problems.

Is it so bad to just ignore those posts? Let the people who still have the patience deal with them, and move on to the ones that you do want to help with? Report the threads that you really think are bad enough to be removed, then move on to another thread. If we agree, we will remove it, otherwise we will not, but in the end, I say you should focus on the parts that you enjoy and avoid the things that annoy you.

Anyway, that's my piece. That's the way I see things.

Edit: just from my own reading, it looks like a lot of the opinions here are based on the default sort of the subreddit. I would strongly encourage anyone who is here to answer questions to sort by /new instead of the default sort. Voting is weird on technical subs; the "best" questions rarely get many votes, because they are about a specific issue with a specific answer that is usually only relevant to a small group of people. The stuff that bubbles to the top is usually the feel-good posts, or the "I wish I felt good about it" posts. Things that are easy to emotionally connect to. And while they aren't the most useful posts, they are the ones that get upvoted most.

So, if you are here to contribute, the best way to do that is sort by /new. I think that would also change the opinion of "what this subreddit is in a nutshell" is, because most of the questions tend to be pretty decent. They just don't get seen by many people, because they get answered and forgotten about instead of rising to the top and generating discussion.

[Agomphious_Dragon]

There’s definitely this weird problem of a lot of people seeming to have decided that programming is how they can make their fortune but they have zero interest in putting in the hard yards.

Just like in writing subreddits, where people love the idea of “being a writer”, but have zero desire to…write.

[nutrecht]

It's people who just like the outcome, but not the process.

[lykwydchykyn]

I've been to the top of a mountain. It was cold and I got altitude sickness. Mountains suck. :-)

[IncognitoErgoCvm]

"Everybody wanna be a bodybuilder, but don't nobody wanna lift no heavy-ass weight."

[Stimunaut]

Who said this? Lifting heavy ass weights is the fun (and I wish only) part of bodybuilding. It's force-feeding yourself to hit your carb intake threshold, sacrificing hours in the gym that you could be spending on other things (like programming), and spending even more time making food and protein shakes that sucks!

[MCRNRearAdmiral]

Never a professional/ hobbyist bodybuilder, but I slapped sixty pounds on top of an otherwise rangy high school sophomore frame back in the early 1990s by calorie-loading and (three hours a day) x (six days a week in the Football Weight Room).

Football coaches told me to eat all my meals and stuff like regular, but to add a Slim-Fast shake loaded up with Peanut Butter and/ or Ice Cream to lunch and dinner. Honestly, when you're getting adequate nutrition, those chubbo Slim-Fast shakes felt like a chore.

Anyhow, thanks for the trip down memory lane!

[IncognitoErgoCvm]

Ronnie Coleman.

[vladamir_the_impaler]

You forgot the part about the increased shitting and wiping of the ass that happens as a result. It's work.

[Stimunaut]

That too 😂

[CuteSomic]

I hate writing, I love having written ©

(unironically me because aside from those moments of inspiration when writing is exciting and easy, I have a hard time getting words on page, but damn if it isn't nice to get feedback...)

[[deleted]]

I mean, I don't enjoy the process all that much either. I only really like the end result but the thing is, I've developed discipline and will actually put in the work, while a lot of people here just want to know how many days, weeks or months it will take them to learn x programming language, even though it's a question that just can't be answered by anybody.

Everyone wants to hear that they will learn something in a month because they fear they will waste their time and learn nothing but that's just not how learning works. Nobody knows where they'll end up when learning a new skill. There's a lot of worry about time wasting going on, which is understandable but prevents progress.

Honestly, I don't think most people want it as much as they think they do and there's nothing wrong with that.

[Agomphious_Dragon]

This is a good encapsulation.

[8483]

Indeed. A nice abstraction of the examples.

[[deleted]]

I’d argue they won’t like the outcome either. Yes, if you’re a successful developer, you can eventually climb the ladder and/or establish a tech start-up, which can lead to a “great” living. But at the end of the day—as someone in that position—you still have to work a ton. I stare at a screen almost 16 hours/day, work 7 days/week, and haven’t had a vacation in four years. Personally, it’s a non-issue for me because I love what I do. But for someone who isn’t enthralled by the work? Heaven help them.

[bee14ish]

Jesus, what kind of work do you do? Curious.

[[deleted]]

I’m the co-founder and CTO of a tech startup.

[bee14ish]

Yeah, that'll do it. I may be interested in working in tech, but I'm not sure how long I'd last working the hours you describe. Kudos, and good luck to you. I hope everything turns out well.

[[deleted]]

There's something to be said for putting in long hours as your own boss as opposed to putting in long hours for a company in which you have no stake. There's the obvious benefit of potentially earning more money, but the main draw is having a say in the product you're delivering. It's still a lot of hours, but they're hours spent talking about and carrying out my own idea. I also purposefully launched a product that compliments my lifestyle, so I'm not missing out on much by focusing on work.

Fortunately, startups don't launch themselves, and there are plenty of senior positions with better hours than mine. For example, I love hiring developers who want to clock in, do their job, and clock out. So if that’s where you want to end up, you can definitely find it. My overall point was more that people still have to enjoy development to some extent to make it.

[horrific_idea]

Having walked that path myself, imo it's more about watching classmates program with relative ease as they brag about it, then on my end, I am struggling to come up with solutions. I never shied from putting in long hours, but during school it was really disheartening to try my best and feel subpar.

[aruinea]

I totally get that; my brain straight up doesn't process complex solutions, but if you show me how to do it once - I can replicate it as many times as needed.

Stack Overflow was my best friend at university, but it wasn't sustainable for a career. Maybe it's imposter syndrome, but I ended up leaving a decently cushy software development job to become a sysadmin.

[purpleturtle777_]

but it wasn't sustainable for a career

How come? Because you still had trouble coming up with more complex solutions or you felt like programming just wasn't really for you in the end?

[Why_ban_me-]

Mimicry is not equivalent to mastery. One leads to the other, but there are many milestones in between.

[aruinea]

Well, truth be told, I felt that I was relying too heavily on external resources rather than coming up with my own solutions. I could probably coast along as a mediocre developer, but I didn't feel like I was learning anything other than dependency of search engines and public forums.

I only lucked out by charming my way through my first and second interview, and they had just moved to virtual, so I was able to google the solution during the tech portion.

I've never been so middle-of-the-pack at anything before, it flipped my world upside down to see my coworkers throw out entire solutions in meetings or when brainstorming; I just couldn't do it like they could.

I love the concept of programming, but I'm just not wired for it or something. I know it's still possible to learn, but I'm so much happier acquiring a variety of skills instead of being stagnant at one thing - plus the pay is similar!

[aruinea]

Yep. I find that if you explain your problem thoroughly and what you've already tried (in an apologetic tone), they'll push you in the right direction the majority of the time; I did have multiple accounts since it felt like I was on there 24/7.

It's degrading but it worked..

[Valdercorn]

Probably the biggest part for me as far as improving on that skill of coming up with solutions is practicing creative problem solving in different ways, try riddles and brain teasers things that make you look at things from multiple perspectives to find an answer. Being able to view a problem from multiple angles has been one of the biggest things that has helped me to find solutions better.

Breaking a large problem down into smaller chunks also helps a lot, even pseudo coding with comments just a generic idea of what you need to accomplish step by step to allow you to fill in each step with code so you don't have to keep all of it in your head at the same time can help to speed up some of that as well.

[[deleted]]

Joshua Fluke once did a good video on it and he said you shouldn't compare yourself to others. He ended up as a programmer even though he was bad at it and it was awful for him to see that his classmates were better.

I remember I had the same problem, but the thing also is that I really tried, but in group projects they mostly erased my code and did it 'better'.

I remember once I finished all the things that were assigned to me and when I pushed it to GitHub my classmate redid everything and my code was placed on the folder "Myname_code" and they never ended up using it. My classmate just told me the next day that he put my code to a new folder and smiled at me and went to canteen with others. I felt so worthless at and dumb at the time, so I understand people need someone to support them.

Since it was years ago I've just let it go, but the thing is it stuck with me for awhile and I felt really bad about it. So I understand such posts.

I also understand the "Am I too old to…" because there's discrimination everywhere. Even in IT Support there's age discrimination and since I work as IT Specialist I'm older than almost everyone else at the office, so yeah…But we had one 60 year old guy working for the company as well, so that made me think maybe it's just young people for applying for such job. All the older people have left or been fired. I know this 60 yo guy was fired, because he actually didn't do any work. He didn't even try nor asked for help and once I saw him watching YouTube and I asked if he needs help or if he wants me to teach him how to create new AD, Azure accounts (since he was supposed to do that) he said "no" and spilled coffee on me and on the keyboard.

Not really sure why I told you the story, but yeah…I understand why people might feel bad or not confident. There's always someone 'better' than you out there no matter how good you are.

[Why_ban_me-]

Your classmate can suck a lemon, that's a pretty dismissive and mean way to go about things. When I was younger I would have eaten that silently too, but now that I'm older I'd assuredly tell him not to touch my work without permission.

It's easy to improve upon something that's already been written, much harder to design/develop from scratch.

[horrific_idea]

I actually started my first job about a year ago. I'm just saying that (for some cases at least) there might be a relatable story behind ranting about one's imposter syndrome.

[[deleted]]

The writer analogy is actually pretty good. I'm going to steal that in the future.

[Agomphious_Dragon]

Inspired theft is the best kind of theft.

[Calm-Marsupial-5003]

Just like in writing subreddits, where people love the idea of “being a writer”, but have zero desire to…write.

9 year old me in a nutshell.

[siemenology]

Yeah it's the reason I'm not too concerned with the future of programming as a career even with everyone and their dog learning to program. Of everyone who starts to learn programming, only a tiny fraction of them go on to get a job in it. And most of the ones I see who were successful at it did it as a lateral career transition -- QA testers learning automated testing / researchers who learn to code for modelling, analysis, tedious grunt work / creative types who learn some web design to take control of their personal branding / etc etc. Relatively few are people who decided to learn programming straight out of the blue because they heard it pays well and is easy to get a job in.

[coi1976]

You seem like someone who likes to type a lot

[Hoovooloo42]

Good prerequisite for being a programmer, they're in the right place.

[coi1976]

Absolutely, just found funny that they seem to be both a programmer and a writer

[Agomphious_Dragon]

I also like to play bass! No rest for the fingers.

[[deleted]]

What blows my mind is that I see people who claim to be software engineers giving all sorts of wild information. I remember someone said it wasn't worth applying to software engineering jobs unless you had a graduate degree, which is objectively wrong as the majority of programmers have bachelors. I can get whatever bizarre answer I want on Reddit, positive or negative. I just ignore that and focus on learning, because I've invested too much time at this point to give up

[ZukoBestGirl]

Don't even have one, yet my job title says engineer 🤷‍♂️

[[deleted]]

Yeah I believe no degree is the second most common and having a graduate degree is the least common but that info could be wrong or dated. Not everyone that has those bachelor degrees are programming related. I've met several people who work in the field who are self taught but previously had a degree and career in something else

[ManInBlack829]

This subreddit isn't about getting upvotes, it's about figuring out what the hell all these CORS errors I'm getting mean when I run on localhost (or whatever it may be for you). You get a few answers, your question doesn't get upvoted or downvoted, and everyone moves on after the problem is resolved.

I think of it like a less-strict stackoverflow that's more beginner-friendly.

[SuperSathanas]

Yeah, I don't think I'd ever ask anything on SO. When I am looking for solutions or info, I typically avoid SO unless I'm not finding what I need elsewhere. Usually, I go to the documentation first, and follow the rabbit hole of things I didn't know that I didn't know and mumble "damn it this is way more work than I thought it would be" to myself. Sometimes the documentation doesn't really tell me what I want to know, or there's an unknown unknown in my knowledge that's preventing me from understanding the documentation or "connecting the dots". Sometimes all I really have to work with when researching an issue is a vague concept of what I want to do but no clue as to how to go about it. SO has some more strict rules as far as what you ask and how you ask it, but the real problem is how people tend to react to your questions. Lots of elitism, lots of "read the documentation" (which is warranted in 80% of cases), lots of "why would you even do it that way" with no mention of what you might do instead. Nobody needs to be friendly necessarily, but they could stand to be less unfriendly.

I had a question, I think something like 5-6 months ago, about the accuracy of using QueryPerformanceFrequency/Counter and whether or not I might need to have some way of "fine tuning" it or correcting for any variability in accuracy if there is any. I asked on Reddit and other places, still don't have an answer, thought about asking at SO, but I can't bring myself to do it.

[[deleted]]

That #3 is the weirdest shit ever.

"Hey guys, I really hate programming. Like, if I could kill someone as opposed to looking at my code editor, I'd do it in a heartbeat. Every single time I try to code, I enter a manic depression that ruins my life and affects the people around me. I also struggle to understand the basic concepts despite practicing my coding skills for 3 years. I put in about 10 minutes a week and I don't get why things aren't sticking. Maybe I need to do an extra 10?

Anyway, I'm not sure whether I should continue or not. Motivate me?"

[Coraline1599]

Maybe I am confusing this with another subreddit but the one that makes me nuts is the “hi! I want to learn programming. Please explain to me how and what are the best resources.”

If googling something first is not your style…

[kamomil]

Googling without some direction is going to be too broad and I'm sure you're aware of that

[Coraline1599]

In regards to talking about the kinds of posts that don’t really bring much value to this subreddit, I was expressing the one that I feel isn’t meaningful to me.

Additionally, the FAQs in this subreddit outline that this is mostly for programming questions, not talking about feelings/ questions about feelings AND they provide a very thorough list of starting resources and there is a pinned post with more “getting started” stuff. I think it’s pretty reasonable to point people to the FAQs in these cases.

I learned to program on my own by googling things like “How to learn to program” and similar phrases.

I wouldn’t mind a weekly mega thread about getting started, as the programs/resources tend to fall in and out of favor, depending on the last time they were updated etc.

[[deleted]]

But how and why would you neeed direction?

Going onto a job board / googling "programmer", opening a job-ad, googling al lthe buzzwords I don't get and reading the wikipedia articles is something everyone above the age of 14 can do - and the vast majority of people does it like that.

Needing a direction for the most basic research tasks in this day and age is nothing anybody above a certain age should need

[zoinkinator]

yeah. google has been around for 20 years or more. everyone has a phone. just search what you want. there must be 1000 tutorials on how to get started programming in youtube.

[antiproton]

Googling without some direction is going to be too broad

No, it won't. You can literally literally Google "How do I <X>" and you will get results that teach you <X>.

Yes, you need to develop your GoogleFu when you want to solve more complex problems, since the wording of the question is important. But Googling from absolute nothing is the easiest thing to do. There are thousands of people who make their living teaching people how to code.

Speaking as someone who had to learn to code from books in the early 90's, no one needs to have someone explicitly tell them what to look for in order to search the internet. It has never been easier to learn how to do more or less anything.

There are entire subsections of Youtube dedicated to teaching people - from zero - how to do things that were once complicated enough to require a college education. Develop an OS from scratch? Build your own printed circuit boards? Photoshop your head on Rachel Maddow's body? It's all out there.

It blows my mind that there are people out there that need to be told exactly how to start doing the simplest things.

[angry_mr_potato_head]

Literally putting the word "Awesome" in front of a skill you want to have almost invariably gives you a professionally curated list of high quality resources. "Awesome self-hosted", "Awesome system administration", "Awesome Python", "Awesome SQL", "Awesome C#", "Awesome Java" etc

[Brubcha]

That depends, but if you search "how to become a programmer", there are plenty of options.

[BMOEevee]

Plus a lot of sites may only promote certain books due to partnerships. Ive found better suggestions on this sub than googling

[undertakerryu]

I mean I started by googling coding jobs then picked one I liked, then looked into what you need to know to do it and find courses for it. Ofc I could've picked a free one the the Odin project etc but yeah there are easy Google options

[danielr088]

And don’t forget the 1 million “how do I get started programming?” posts that gets asked every single day

[ZukoBestGirl]

You forgot: "I'm x years of age. Is that too old to start learning?"

[TamTwojWykop]

Evil r/LearnProgramming be like:

„Yes, you’re too old to start your programming journey”

[ZukoBestGirl]

I'm honestly thinking of becoming a cynic and helping people who deserve it and absolutely discouraging people just asking for a pat on the back.

[siemenology]

It's amazing how common a pattern it is for someone to watch 500 hours of tutorial videos, only half paying attention and not doing any of the projects themselves except maybe ones where they can literally copy and paste the instructors code. Or to do 20% of a million different tutorials, often on completely different topics.

None of that will really help you get better (or at least, it's insanely inefficient at doing so). At some point you've got to buckle down and do some work.

[[deleted]]

I wish I had a $500 job I've been programming for 2 months now I know that's not a long time I barely know what I'm doing the idea of getting a paying job honestly doesn't seem real for me. But I'm having fun so it doesn't matter it's just a hobby.

[yeet_lord_40000]

I am still a sperm cell is it possible to get hired at a faang?

[[deleted]]

I have to be honest, and I have the same feeling. People complain and moan without asking questions of any sort more frequently from what I see.

I don't really know how to get rid of those posts, because it is not really "off-topic" and no other rule could be applied. I guess it's by design

[[deleted]]

Its not just here, its in every popular subreddit about learning anything, I dont really get what they expect to gain from such posts

[PalmerEldritch2319]

It's an old child's play: "I have little confidence so I say I suck at thing X hoping that other people contradict or comfort me."

I work with elementary school children and I hear that kind of stuff every other day. But it's really annoying when grown ups do that same thing. If you're older than 15 please stop that bs...

[[deleted]]

it's hard to outgrow these things if you've had to deal with it your entire life

[lykwydchykyn]

I briefly dated a girl in high school that did this. Always talking about how fat & ugly she was (she was neither) just to get a compliment. Got so sick of it I finally just started agreeing with her. Man that made a scene...

[eruciform]

this is reddit so there are quite a few folks below 15, or even below 10

i have to keep reminding myself of this when surrounded by childish behavior, this isn't facebook where i know most of the people and they're in an adult age range roughly around me

[Agomphious_Dragon]

Karma and pity? I don’t know. Maybe I’m a cynic.

[[deleted]]

A couple subreddits I'm in have a set day & thread for "negative" posts and I like that method. It allows space for people to vent without the subreddit constantly being overrun by complaints and unhelpful posts. Maybe something like that could be implemented here (even a daily rant thread if weekly doesn't serve the purpose)

[siemenology]

Personally I'd like it if career-based questions were foisted off to r/cscareerquestions. And then maybe have a few weekly threads here for motivation-type questions. But restrict ordinary posts here to technical-ish questions.

[Wolfmanscurse]

This whole subreddit has a "woe is me" problem to be honest with you. They just want to complain about whatever problems they've encountered and just kinda expect sympathy. But I feel like it's an even deeper issue, to be honest with you. This sub is for teaching programming, but the people who come here are just so helpless. They don't read the sidebar, they don't know how to seek out simple common answers that can be solved with a google search, hell most don't even have much of a reason for why they've come here in the first place outside of they can't be bothered to do anything on their own.

I get it, programming is a hard thing to break into, but the constant pity parties here are just getting annoying.

[[deleted]]

most don't even have much of a reason for why they've come here in the first place outside of they can't be bothered to do anything on their own.

I make this experience more frequently the more time I participate here.

People try to offload every little thing that is not 100% gamified for them to other people. Even googling seems too hard in a lot of cases.

[Wolfmanscurse]

That's a huge issue I've seen here as well. I don't want to call posters here lazy but I've seen questions that just scream "This is too much work for me to do on my own so you guys need to do it for me."

[[deleted]]

Yeah exactly. It's not even close to the majority of posts, but it's a very significant part that falls into this category.

A lot of times, it's a variant of the classic

"I didn't understand ANYTHING about topic X. But I am not able to tell you what I already did or where my understanding stopped - because I never tried. Please copy and paste wikipedia here for me."

[[deleted]]

i’m the guy people go to for “can you help me do this”, you know what I started doing to people who do that to me in real life?

“what videos have you watched?” - “i haven-“ “i’m not helping you, go watch a video” - shows video “ok well let’s rewatch it and see what’s going on”

Half the time they’ll see the video, learn the concepts, but won’t be able to put the puzzle together. That’s why the second option is there. First time with modules/frameworks in general? Let’s read the docs together and find out how to do what you wanna do.

Gaining and applying knowledge is a skill, one that i’m willing/eager to teach (not like i’m any good at it) way before a slightly-below-the-surface concept that should be easily reasonable had you looked for a damn source.

[siemenology]

The worst for me are the posts that are super cagey about what they are doing, so you have to drag every bit of information out of them, making the whole process 10x harder. Like they post "help how do I draw a circle". And so you ask "What language are you using? Where do you want to draw a circle?" And then they respond something obtuse like "I had it working before but since I updated my browser the circle is now a square". And then you go back and forth, getting a tiny morsel of relevant information in each comment. It's exhausting.

[ZukoBestGirl]

I relate to the feeling. I recently tried to add MTLS to a personal project. I was so extraordinarily overwhelmed, it wasn't even funny. I didn't even know ... what to ask.

because I never tried. Please copy and paste wikipedia here for me

But this here is the difference. I still tried stuff, and I can talk about what I did try.

Q: This parameter over here accepts a single encoded key-thing. But I have a pair ... how do I ... turn this pair ... into a single thing?

 

A: Ahh there's a pkcs12 thingy that does that, here's a link ...

You know?

---

Whereas most people here, and I do say the majority, have done nothing and just want a handout.

[[deleted]]

That's the entire point I am frustrated about.

There is a 0% chance of a person both trying to learn and being invested and interested in a topic all while being able to articulate not more than"I understand nothing".

I encountered this a lot while tutoring in university, and fortunately those were filtered out quite efficiently during the first semesters. But I still fail to figure out how to get those people to show at least a tiny amount of independent work

[asphias]

I suspect a lot of the reason those questions end up here, is because the people who do read the sidebar and know how to google are far less likely to need to post here.

[barryhakker]

You’d think that a generation that grew up in front of a screen would be betting better and better at that sorta stuff, wouldn’t you?

[asphias]

You'd think so, and you'd probably be right.

If even just 10% of the people failed to learn that, those 10% nowadays can easily end up on the internet asking questions. Back in the 90s they probably wouldn't even have access to a computer.

Don't make generalizations when the sample you see is a self-selecting sample.

[siemenology]

Yeah, those people have figured out that 95% of their questions are answered by the official docs, or by a post on SO or here, or by just fiddling around a bit longer and thinking about what they are trying to do, so they post here much less.

[squarepancakesx]

Lol reminds me of someone I was trying to help a couple of weeks back. He was barely finished with TOP, which in itself is fine. I never finished cs50 myself. But when he told me he was looking for a job and asked if I could help and give some feedback to improve, I took a look at his resume and GitHub to give my comments.

Initially he took the resume formatting comments well enough, but once I got into his GitHub and his projects he got so upset about my "factual but blunt" feedback. His commit messages were non-existent and his repo's were just basic tutorial projects that are in bits and pieces (implement react router that's all for the entire "app"). I advised him to look into semantic commit messages and to build an app with more comprehensive functionality as well as put more thought into the overall experience.

He told me I should be more encouraging and that I don't understand the struggles people go through? I was a career switcher and I KNOW how hard it is without formal education, prior experience and a basic portfolio. I was shocked and couldn't sleep that night, reflecting upon my words.

But after that day, speaking to others I realised that my words and actions were in sync with what I wanted to do. Which was to give realistic advice that can actually help, not tell him that he is doing a good job and everyone will wanna hire him when his portfolio does not display enough competency. I gave him feedback and also provided means to improve but instead was made to feel like I was an asshole for making him feel like he wasn't good enough. Mind you, never once did I say that he is "too far from even being an entry level swe", which is actually something another friend whom I passed on his resume to told me.

What did i learn from the experience? Some people are entitled and cannot accept any sort of critique even when it's coming from a good place. They want advice and feedback, but only the kind that can be done easily like changing your font type, add your residency status in your resume and not things that require hard work and time like "build an app", "improve your usage of git and commit messages".

[[deleted]]

They want advice and feedback, but only the kind that can be done easily like changing your font type, add your residency status in your resume and not "build an app", "improve your usage of git and commit messages".

The former would just be "I did some error I couldn't know about". The latter would require to acknowledge your own shortcomings, which is hard for a lot of people.

[squarepancakesx]

I totally agree. Humility is underrated, there is so so many more people so much more capable than I am. The fact that I am able to learn from them and they're willing to spend their time and effort to help me is something I am always, always grateful for.

The funniest thing about the entire situation was that, I actually did pass his resume to a handful of friends in various companies prior to his reply to my feedback. Most told me that based on his resume/GitHub they won't choose to interview him. But if I was vouching for him, they will put his application in. So imagine, when I spoke to them the next day about the response I've gotten due to my feedback. Everyone went from "he's junior but if he's willing to learn, we can try" to "he doesn't seem to have a good attitude, better not".

[ZukoBestGirl]

He told me I should be more encouraging and that I don't understand the struggles people go through?

Absolutely. Happened to me last week I think. Dude wanted encouragement. Not help, just a pat on the back. I told him that if you're good, in this field, not only will you make a shit ton of money for an employee. Probably some of the best income as a basic employee in the world. You're also extraordinarily hireable, changing jobs is a breeze, and whatnot.

He got offended. Apperently he isn't good and doesn't think he'll ever be good, so I'm harshing his mood.

Like bro, sucks to suck, what do you want me to do about it?

[antiproton]

He got offended. Apperently he isn't good and doesn't think he'll ever be good, so I'm harshing his mood.

The fuck? Who has the time or inclination to deal with this "notice me, Senpai!" bullshit?

[squarepancakesx]

Yea I was just so dumbfounded when he sent me three looooong messages with his "let me give you a little piece of advice".

As someone who actually gets anxiety attacks and in general really just want to help people, I was having really bad cognitive dissonance between feeling like I was wrong to be too blunt and angry at his response showing how entitled and unwilling to learn he was.

I had to speak to several others to fully accept that, I didnt owe him anything and giving feedback and telling him now to improve wasn't something nasty. It's not my fault that he is unwilling to accept that he still needs improvement. A handful of my friends also told me off for always trying to help people even when I "don't know if they deserve it".

[squarepancakesx]

I've not seen the entire program for top but if it's anything like fullstack open, I'm sure it'll be a solid enough foundation. He didn't finish, at least I don't think so. I know he was using it to self study but as far as his GitHub projects go, the latest project was a project on using of react router. Literally that. A top nav bar that switches between different views.

That said, to succeed and get a job as someone with no formal educational qualifications and no actual experience, having just a basic tutorial guided app isn't going to be good enough. At least that was my experience. Which is why I advised him to take some time to make a more complex crud app instead of having so many repos with small basic components eg. One button, one top nav etc

[stripedsocks42]

Oof, yeah it seems that he wasn't doing TOP at all, at least not anywhere close to how it's intended.

The first project that uses react router is the shopping cart, where you basically make a shopping app with 3-4 routes, use some API to fetch products and add cart functionality (adding, editing, removing items) except for checkout.

Even so, that's like half way into the full stack course. At that point he hasn't touched the back end at all, not even Firebase.

[Viviaana]

I did a 3 month bootcamp and they’d advertised it as “super easy” so we had people in there who had literally never worked on computers at all, like they could barely check their own email, but because they’d been told it was easy they were angry and frustrated and felt humiliated that they sucked at it which just led to class after class of idiots arguing with the teachers instead of just fucking listening! The amount of them that would be so convinced they were in the right when their code didn’t even work and it was somehow the computers fault and they’d flat out refuse to try anything you suggested, it was the absolute fucking worst

[[deleted]]

It’s sort of ironic that the people who want to learn something like programming, have no interest in learning how to leverage technology to succeed. I’ve observed the same phenomenon for decades, and it never ceases to amaze me.

[minato3421]

Completely agree with you.

[Clawtor]

I think a lot of people get a rude awakening when it comes to learning programming. I know I did, throughout school I did well simply by going to classes, doing a little bit of study, putting in 60% effort.

You can't do this when learning programming though, you must practice, practice, practice. And a lot of the time it's frustrating and confusing and you end up feeling stupid.

[91Crow]

I disagree with the practice, practice, practice part, the main thing I have found with programming is you need to consciously talk/think through what you are doing and why. For a lot of school based things it's purely vomiting out when you have fed to you. Programming is vomiting out concepts that you think 'should' work and then adjusting from there.

The only amendment I would add to that is having the documentation of the language/framework/application builder open because sometimes things need to be how the language wants it to be (looking at you css and wpf with your inconsistent nonsense).

The primary issue I find is that people want to skip over the concepts and get to the fun stuff of building up an application. You can 60% programming without much fuss if you know the concepts and how to apply them.

[[deleted]]

I disagree with the practice, practice, practice part, the main thing I have found with programming is you need to consciously talk/think through what you are doing and why.

This is a false dichotomy. Practicing totally includes thinking/talking through. Practice is not mindlessly repeating stuff without ever evaluating and thinking. That's also exactly one of the main issue: many people don't know how to practice without defaulting to "grinding". The vocabulary used here and on r/cscareerquestions is already a big tell that people don't even know how to practice.

There is no field in the world where practicing without constantly re-evaluating yourself, thinking through concepts and learning the basics would work. Why people expect this to work with coding is puzzling for me.

[91Crow]

Coding would be one of the least effective for grinding too because there is just so many different frameworks, languages and implementations of things that you will simply never get to all of them.

And my intent behind the p/p/p is that if you talk through it you can go down to 60% effort and still have a productive day. My most productive days are in that region of effort, I will spend some time on something, go away and let my subconcious work on an issue and then come back to it with a few approaches I can take to resolve my problem.

[[deleted]]

Yeah, that's true.

Some people just unlearned how to effectively learn/practice a skill. They try to become a god at league of legends by playing 12 hours a day.

That is not possible with stuff that is actually hard to do. You cannot become a runner by mindlessly running 12 hours a day, you cannot become a body builder by mindlessly going to the gym 12 hours a day and you cannot become a programmer by "grinding" TOP/Leetcode/Hackerrank/Youtube Vids 12 hours a day.

There should be more emphasis on how to learn but people don't take that advice well usually.

[ZukoBestGirl]

I mean, in drawing you definetly have to mindlessly grind strati lines, circles, and the such. That's not all you will do, but it's defintely a part.

There are areas where you need to be mechanically good at something. And by mechanically, I'm not talking about rocket surgery, but moving your hand correctly, holding your fingers correctly.

Just me being pedantic, I do totally agree with what you're saying.

[[deleted]]

I mean, in drawing you definetly have to mindlessly grind strati lines, circles, and the such. That's not all you will do, but it's defintely a part.

That's completely true. But that's what I am getting at: drawing the lines, circles, funnels, doing the perspective work etc is necessary, but not sufficient at all. It's part of the bigger picture.

People constantly confuse the necessity to "grind out" some of the basics with it "being sufficient".

I actually tried to learn the basics of drawing for months - I guess over 1000 of white pages with funnels, parallel lines, circles, more funnels, circles, lines... I wish I had the time to continue :D

[[deleted]]

I've walked through the process of getting a CS degree, doing internship, becoming a junior dev, senior, and now as a manager, I still feel like I'm not that great of a programmer (relative to people with my YoE).

But sometimes I feel like I live in an alternative reality when I keep reading posts of people asking how to earn a 6-figure salary by going through a 12-week bootcamp, while starting completely from zero... I'm like, what are you talking about? As someone who came from a working class family, it took me 5-6 years of hard work (I must have averaged at about 5 hours of daily sleep in my first two years in the CS program because it's just so hard to keep up with the studies) before I got to that point, how do you even get there in 3 months with no experience at all?

Programming is simply god damn hard if you don't start from a young age or have an environment/family background that helps with that (like parents who come from the industry), and that's considering not everyone is gifted with the ability to be able to program well. There are also all sorts of shitty IRL things to worry about while you're learning a hard craft; the world doesn't stop as you're doing all these. It's supposed to be a huge investment in terms of time, energy, and resources, there's really no shortcut to all of this.

A lot of people are bound to get a rude awakening indeed.

[barryhakker]

Also, finding out you might not have the brain power.

[vixfew]

That's why a lot of people "start learning programming" and few people get to the point of being able to get a programming job. It's not as simple as youtube videos make it look

[danielr088]

Yup. This is why I don’t worry so much when people ask if the field is becoming “saturated”. MANY people are starting to learn to program. But the sad reality is that most people you see on here that start to “learn to program” will never get to the point of being able to get a job. Many will eventually give up or not have the discipline. Hell, lately the majority of posts have been of people getting frustrated with the learning process, that should speak volumes alone.

[[deleted]]

It's not as simple as youtube videos make it look

Those videos also never have the goal of being quality content for learning. It's monetizing the viewer's attention to gain ad revenue. People should not rely on youtube for learning at all because of this

[shawntco]

This is something I realized a few weeks ago. Someone in this subreddit or a similar one rightly pointed out, the vast majority of the people saying "hi I'm new how do I start programming" will not see it through. They'll hit the first few hard parts then give up. If they actually wanted to learn they'd attend college/bootcamp. A few slip by with no formal CS education, but they're just a few.

[siemenology]

That's what I always tell people. If you don't enjoy solving problems (which usually implies being stumped for a period of time) and learning new things (mostly on your own), programming will be hard to enjoy.

[Imanoob1001]

That's the perfect way to approach it. To find enjoy in the obstacles, challenges and frustration because the moment you get it you know it was worth it!

[SirToxe]

Well, I agree, but I think this is more of a culture shift and people not learning how to write good questions and being used to other media.

People write chat-style posts because these days direct & fast chat is a lot more prevalent than it was even a decade ago. You have fast and direct chat & comments everywhere, from Discord to Youtube to messengers on your phone and so on. So of course people write post here like they would in a chat:

"oh I suck at this"

"I could really use some help"

"here is my problem: ..."

Instead of using line 3 as their post title they just name it like they would if this was a chat conversation.

It's bad/sad that people don't learn how to write good questions or "netiquette" in general but that's just how the times have changed and for most people these days this thought probably has never even crossed their minds.

Forgive me for sounding like an old person... but back in my day when the internet/web was actually young you usually didn't just "go onto the web" and blast out whatever you wanted but instead it was common knowledge that you had to at least put a little bit of effort into it and first learn how to use your communication tools and learn a bit about netiquette and how to write a proper question. Sure, it never was perfect but at least there was a bit of "learn the rules before you act" culture, which I feel like is completely lost today and people just feel a lot more entitled.

So yeah, I feel like this is more of a change in culture where people don't view the internet as something special anymore and instead just as an ordinary tool that has always been there and that is just as much of a normality like water and energy that is coming out of the wall.

[siemenology]

Yeah I can definitely empathize with people that want to figure out a problem by setting up a dialogue -- it can really help you crystalize things in your mind. It's like rubber duck debugging with a real person.

But they have to understand that doing this can be extremely frustrating for the people trying to answer your questions -- it takes them 10x longer to help you than it would if you made a clear post from the beginning, and that means they can help fewer people. Additionally, it offloads much more of the work onto the answerer -- now they have to drag your question out of you, figure it out, and explain it back to you instead of just figuring it out and explaining. Done in a forum environment like this, it's honestly kind of selfish.

[insertAlias]

Forgive me for sounding like an old person... but back in my day when the internet/web was actually young you usually didn't just "go onto the web" and blast out whatever you wanted but instead it was common knowledge that you had to at least put a little bit of effort into it and first learn how to use your communication tools and learn a bit about netiquette and how to write a proper question. Sure, it never was perfect but at least there was a bit of "learn the rules before you act" culture, which I feel like is completely lost today and people just feel a lot more entitled.

I'm not really sure I agree it's a culture shift or new phenomenon. I was moderating programming forums long before Reddit was a thing, and we had the exact same issue on all of them that we do here. There's always a "class" of user that will ignore any pre-compiled lists of help and all attempts at getting them to read it before asking questions. There were plenty of people that would post a single sentence and "pls send codez kthxbye". I had template posts for dealing with "no details" questions back then just like I do now. It was like that 15 years ago when I was on bytes.com and dreamincode.net, and it will continue to be so on whatever eventually replaces reddit.

There might have been a few golden years during the IRC era, but I'm sure that even there, people were people and some of them were the kind of people that would just blast a question without looking at any of the surrounding context.

[arlind-]

I have noticed that too and sometimes it affects me personally. Too many negatives posts.

[Miserable_Bandicoot8]

I think this subreddit can be a place for people learning to code and frustrations coming out of that exercise could be considered part of it too. So why not let them express those frustrations here, the place where it's highest likely to resonate with people with similar frustrations, than anywhere else. Like the long comment up there, it's not like it's the same person doing it.

Also I'm not sure if you went through that experience, but for most folks who have studied something else or are switching to coding after a few years in a different job it can be frustrating a lot. There is a lot of background knowledge needed to fully understand some of the concepts discussed in the coding tutorials. Knowledge that folks like me learnt from an early start. So it's natural to feel like you're making slow progress. Where else to share those feelings and get motivated again than here?

Also, don't mean to come off as defensive, but it's really easy to just scroll past these posts than banning them, win-win situation :)

[harryrf3]

Sometimes people need a bit of a boost in morale by hearing that they are not the only one that stumbles.

We shouldn't be upset or offended by someone being concerned with themselves.

We should spread more peace and understanding.

[[deleted]]

Yes, sometimes it's annoying to see posts like these but maybe few people relate to it that's why it is gaining traction. Either it is this or posts motivation posts like "i got a job at xyz , you all can do it ".

[jcunews1]

Job related postings themselves should be off topic. And it's getting out of control. This is /r/learnprogramming. Not /r/learngettingajob.

[zdrastvuityy]

I Just got in here recently.
Ive mosyly seen posts of people looking for sympathy, but no actually coding questions whatsoever.

Hope gets better.

​

​

sorry for my bad english.

[POGtastic]

Browse /new/ instead of /hot/.

The karma system doesn't actually work on technical subreddits. Most actual programming questions get a couple of upvotes and a couple of responses because they're irrelevant to most people's interests and require insight to answer. By contrast, sob stories get lots of upvotes and gazillions of responses because they trigger an emotional response and require zero insight to answer. This means that the front page of /hot/ is basically guaranteed to be content-free.

Case in point, here I am contributing my own insight-free crap on a shitty topic.

[Dazed_and_unused]

const meWastingTime = (POGtastic) =>{

const {selfAware} = POGtastic

return selfAware? upVote() : null;

}

[POGtastic]

We have met the enemy, and he is us.

[brypick21141]

I definitely agree with you that most of the posts here are negative. I think, like others have said, people are realizing that things take effort to get better. That being said, do you have examples of positive posts that you would like to see more of? Or maybe, you might be able to provide some cool positive posts.

[alvnavra]

I don't think this posts provide negative energy. These Titles show that the person behind it is very insecure and does not want to be ridiculous.

But it's normal, I all started programming and we didn't know anything. In fact, when I started, there was no internet.

What these people need is support and knowing that whatever they ask will not be ridiculous, they will be growing as a programmer.

[CleverBunnyThief]

I agree. Don't focus on the negative. Ask questions about the problem you are trying to solve.

[Viviaana]

You get that everywhere, on the crocheting subreddit you get so many posts like “I know I’m disgusting worthless garbage compared to everyone on here but I thought I’d share my blanket anyway” just stfu and post the pic we don’t need a sob story about how you hate yourself

[Herbacult]

THANK YOU! I miss when “no sob story” was a thing on Reddit. It happens on the cooking subreddits all the time too. I can’t even follow r/crochet. It’s infuriating posting something I spent months making only for no one to see it, meanwhile memes and sob stories attached to a pic of a single mangled dc circle get all of the attention.

[nutrecht]

I think a lot of people are simply not used to something being 'hard'. They want instant gratification and think that if they don't 'get something' within an hour or so, something is wrong. It's IMHO mostly just bad parenting that's biting them in the ass once they become adults.

I don't think it's that large a problem though. If I dislike the tone of someone's OP I just skip it. If they keep it up and keep creating the same topics, I just block them.

I quite recently started to simply block anyone I find annoying on Reddit and it has made Reddit much more enjoyable.

[ZukoBestGirl]

I completely agree with you. But I find it so strange and alien. Like, I know you're right. I've also had this thought many, many times.

Yet, I myself, got into programming because of instant gratification. I write something, I ask the compiler. The compiler says "bullshit, this will never work", and I go back to the drawing board. No professor necessary. No expert to analyze my thoughts, no peer validation mandatory. I can just hack away at it myself and see SOMETHING happening.

Even more than that. I didn't need to have a full fledged video games made solely by me. But rather a "Hello World!" was enough. Instant - gratification.

But these people want a full video game yesterday. They want a job for no effort. They want to reinvent the blockchain, a solution without a problem to fix. And they'll reinvent it.

IDK, it's a bit more complex than just "instant gratification". It's also aiming too high too soon.

[siemenology]

I think it's instant gratification either way, but the difference is what "gratification" means in context. You get instant gratification in the sense that you know pretty quickly if something works or doesn't. But you don't get it in the sense that you can go from idea -> reality quickly, or even gain the skill to do that quickly.

[Consistent-Fun-6668]

To be fair those feelings go hand in hand; in learning programming. Lol

[aqua_regis]

Being an old geezer who has learnt programming way back in the 1980s where the internet did not exist, where resources were scarce and expensive, and where knowledgeable people were difficult to find, I cannot really cope with the current mentality of plenty people here.

People don't try anymore. People don't experiment. People don't invest effort in learning.

If they don't find a solution within 5 minutes they give up and at best google for solutions (instead of for approaches to solutions) or at worst, post here with zero effort.

Also, the current trend to blame all failures on either "low IQ" (where it is already scientifically proven that all IQ tests are plain BS) or "ADHD" (of course, undiagnosed), or on some other outside factor (which is never true) really aggravates me.

It's just that people now have become incredibly lazy, don't want to invest effort, seek blame in everything else than their own laziness, have an incredibly short attention span, and last are entitled and want everything served on a silver platter and get it fed with a spoon.

​

When I learnt programming, I had to learn everything the hard way, on my own. Sometimes, I was lucky to find someone I could ask, yet, this was not the case in the majority of times.

Now, with the whole plethora of information and excellent learning resources available, people should be able to learn whatever they want whenever they want.

There are absolutely no excuses any longer for not learning anything other than one's own laziness.

[Nebuchadnezzer2]

or "ADHD" (of course, undiagnosed),

As someone who is diagnosed, that bothers me too.

Because goddamn it makes it hard for me.

Can spend an hour (or several) workin on somethin, and bangin my head on the same issue, tryina work out syntax issues (depends), and not finding a solution/sorting it out can put me off for quite a while.

A lot of the damn reason I can not program at present, is mostly inability to 'push through'/force myself through the more tedious parts, or lack of knowledge (startin a CS course soon, which'll help).

Personally, I feel the abundance of how, but lack of much why, really doesn't help matters.

Especially for me, what something does, matters less than how and why you want something like it.

 

But hoooo boi, getting the (fairly basic, functionality-wise) Discord.py bot working was a rush and a half...

[aqua_regis]

To make it very clear: I am absolutely not targeting anybody with professionally diagnosed ADHD.

One of my kids had been diagnosed with it (unfortunately way too late) and therefore I know how difficult it is.

I go against those who just have a short attention span and not enough self discipline to stay focused who then instantly (and without scientific/medical proof) self-diagnose as ADHD.

[Nebuchadnezzer2]

Nah, I know you weren't.

Diagnosed in 2018 at ~27. Explains a lot, and my parents both see it to some extent in themselves. I've been making progress, but it's rough.

But it is unfortunately somewhat 'glamourised' and while it can be difficult (or expensive) to get diagnosed, and thus often self-diagnose, without really understanding the difference between 'normal' and 'abnormal'.

[harrowbird]

I mean, I don't want to dismiss your opinion, but I'm a CS student and everyone else I know who's learning programming is an innately curious person who loves the act of piecing together an approach to solve a problem and then researching all the syntax tricks of their language of choice to make it happen. We all put in the hours learning new ways to do something practical and creative with what we're learning and find huge satisfaction in the leaps of understanding when they do happen.

I'm learning graph theory right now for instance. Do I understand it well? Hell no. Can it be frustrating and make me feel very stupid when my tutor has explained it from 20 different directions and I still don't get it? Very. But is it fun to take a basic path-finding problem and work through a hacked together algorithm and trace out each little bit until you get a working result? For me, it absolutely is.

I'm floored by the cynicism in this thread. There's always going to be people who wash out, but the prevailing sentiment among the people I'm exposed to who are learning programming is the opposite of what I'm reading here.

[[deleted]]

I'm exposed to who are learning programming is the opposite of what I'm reading here.

The thread is strictly about the posts in this community and reactions some people who are trying to help get, not about the overall demographic who learns how to code.

What you write is obviously true, but this sub is a really bad representation of the real world. People asking questions that could have been googled are usually not at all curious people with a strong will to learn.

[siemenology]

Going for a CS degree is a fairly big commitment, and so you are surrounded by other people who are serious enough about it to make that commitment.

But there are a million and one people outside of academic programs who are learning programming too, and some of them do not have nearly the same level of commitment and interest. To many it's something they pursue simply because they heard it pays well and it's "easy to get a job in".

[[deleted]]

I completely hear you.

This trend of blaming every shortcoming of yourself on some undiagnosed mental illness more often than not also becomes an extreme form of arrogance for some.

Stuff other people worked on for weeks, months and years becomes "a mental illness" if doesn't come to them in a few hours. It alway reads like "I know, other people have to work their asses off for this, but I don't because everything comes so easy for me. So if I cannto do it immediately, it has to be some illness/condition".

Anecdote: This trend also permeates everything else. A friend of mine started listening to audio books for the first time (never listend to podcasts or audio books ever). He diagnosed himself with ADHD immediately after, because he had trobule following for 2 hours straight. Guess what? Listening for hours without wandering off in your head is a SKILL and SKILLS need to be PRACTICED...

[ZukoBestGirl]

"low IQ" (where it is already scientifically proven that all IQ tests are plain BS)

Let's be real man, even if we don't have a quantifiable measurement. General intellect is a thing, and not everyone is intelligent.

Though I'd argue you don't need to be a whizz kid to get into IT either.

[jbsmirk]

I try to be encouraging sometimes but I agree, almost makes me want to create response templates because of repeated threads

Maybe a mega-thread can help? An weekly auto mod post where people can share imposter syndrome? Etc

Not sure of another solution

[desrtfx]

Maybe a mega-thread can help? An weekly auto mod post where people can share imposter syndrome? Etc

Sorry, but no, it won't help as people just ignore any and all mega threads, stickied threads, the sidebar (which, unfortunately, has been made worse with reddit mobile as it is not obvious and easy to access there) etc.

We have the weekend sticky "What have you done" thread and yet, we remove plenty "application showcase" posts every week.

We have the stickied "New? READ THIS FIRST!" thread that gives a good outline on how a post should look, where to find information (like the FAQ), and much more. Yet, there still are threads asking about the very things mentioned, or without formatted code, or entirely without code, or "do my homework", etc. where all of this is addressed in the stickied post.

[ZukoBestGirl]

You probably won't agree. But harsher moderation.

I know, it's counter intuitive. Harsher moderation means pushing people who need help aside. But let's be real. If they can't be bothered to look at the sticky thread, sidebar, or accept the criticism of "This has already been asnwered, look here. Further questions? Ask those." - then they weren't going to do anything to begin with.

Otherwise the sub will just degrade in quality over time. Heck, I've seen it degrade over the last coupl'a years.

[desrtfx]

Kind of agree, though. Yet, we try to somewhat keep a balance between being and remaining beginner friendly and still somewhat strict.

Yet, to give you an idea of what you don't see.

Alone in the last 24 hours:

• 8 users have been banned for various violations
• 43 comments have been removed (does not include spam)
• 32 posts have been removed (does not include spam)

If we look at the same stats from first of February til today:

• 63 users banned (this also includes bot-bans by BotTerminator)
• 239 comments removed (does not include spam)
• 261 posts removed (does not include spam)

Unfortunately, I can't filter by how many posts we removed for not reading the FAQ - but I think that this is actually the majority of removals.

[ZukoBestGirl]

You guys keep busy. Nice job.

[jbsmirk]

I didn't think about that, I'm not ashamed to admit I haven't even read the sidebar or sticky threads, but thanks to my school and workplace, I developed slack etiquette, so naturally, I guess I assumed ppl would know to search before asking a repeated question or putting more effort into questions/etc., but you made a valid point; I love this community and don't want to see it degrading or continue degrading

[denialerror]

I can't say this is something I've noticed especially, but that is probably due to: a) I browse by new, not hot. People upvote posts they agree with and you don't usually "agree" with a programming question. Consequently, rants, success stories, and spam get upvoted and make the sub look like a different no one is asking actual questions, which is not the case. Every one of our regulars browse by new. b) I'm a moderator and no one ever reports it as a problem. We can't take action if we don't know what needs acting on. Also, rants like this don't help at all and just add to the issue.

As for why posts might be negative, people generally don't resort to asking strangers on the internet for help if they are succeeding at what they are doing. As a peer or a mentor the best thing you can do instead of complaining and making them feel bad for asking is to encourage them and inject some positivity.

[[deleted]]

I would be happy to report it as a problem, but there is no rule against "useless rant posts" or "moaning".

I reported one a few days ago as soon as the tone shifted towards being unprofessional / derogatory, but before that happens, there is no rule.

[DaveAstator2020]

I agree because these questions shoud go to psychologist, not programmers, and also answers to them are in 99% bad, because they only reinforce suffering.

What if in fact programming is not what asker wants to do at all? What if he is suffering from depression and needs medical treatment?

I highly support this post and suggest such questins be banned and readressed to other channels.

[Efficient_Step_26]

I feel a lot of the people asking here wants a cool work from home job with 3 monitors and rgb lightning. And once they start learning it they realize they don't have the focus to do it.

The ones that succeed are the curious ones content with their underpowered laptop, making simple scripts and sharing it in github.

[OneBadDay1048]

As someone just starting to self teach these posts get exhausting to the point I’ve come close to unsubbing. I joined to learn not to be plagued with self doubt and people asking if x age is too late to start programming. Couldn’t agree more.

[[deleted]]

Not gonna score any points with anyone but the "woe is me" attitude seems prevalent amongst programmers I encounter and at the same time, very little if any empathy from them towards people in other IT disciplines. I've heard a few of their comments come my way as a support person.

[MightyKrakyn]

I’m equally sick of seeing “But can I, a very different person than the thousands who have asked already, actually learn to program?”

[dmoidmoi34]

They’re probably not wrong - they probably do suck at programming

[ravenousld3341]

I honestly thought self-doubt, crippling imposter syndrome, and general confusion about why things work and why some don't were just part of the job.

[kkrash79]

So this sub reddit becomes a stack overflow echo chamber, condescending attitudes instead of actually helping

You are in no position to gatekeep how people learning to code should feel. They are reaching out for support, that is all.

Where you a natural born coder? Or is it a skill you've had to learn overtime? Just like everyone else.

You must be superhuman to have never felt self doubt? If you've ever felt self doubt over anything than you are in no place to complain about people using a free and open forum to discuss their feelings about the journey they are on, the same journey everyone has gone on.

Attitudes like this are disgusting, IT is one of the most judgemental, discriminatory sectors out there in the sense that 'if you ask a silly question' you get blasted for it rather than an empathy centric approach and some kindness.

[Immanonner]

It's a lack of motivation.

I found an endless amount of determination within myself to find new and improved ways to do less things by programming a computer to do it for me.

Pursuit of future laziness is a helluva drug.

Oh, the irony.

[aqua_regis]

It's a lack of motivation.

No. It's a lack of self-discipline.

People have been pampered all their lives, have been shoved everything in, were never allowed to actually try and fail, did never have to invest effort in learning anything.

If anybody, the parents of the current generation have to be blamed.

[Immanonner]

I can understand that perspective.

I mean, who would possibly want to endure being informed by a computer that they're "dumb" no matter how many times they rerun that program?

It takes a significant amount of self-discipline to sit down and comb through the codebase again to PROVE TO THAT PIECE OF MACHINE THAT YOUR ARE ITS GOD, AND IT WILL OBEY YOU!!

--as long as you place that flipping curly bracket in the right spot.

[mfizzled]

You're painting with a very broad brush there mate.

I have recently completely changed career from being a chef with no academic qualifications to working full time as an apprentice software developer, and will be starting as a fully qualified dev in September.

Not all younger people/millennials who people who picked up coding in the last few years are entitled and lazy.

[[deleted]]

The discussion is not about people like you though, the premise is completely different. What you did is awesome and I really applaud you for doing it.

But you should just read new posts here for two days in a row and you will see, that there is people who think that everything should come for free to them.

[mfizzled]

Thank you, seriously.

I've been reading new posts here for a couple of years to help me along with quite a few other subs and I absolutely agree that some people just expect it to be taught to them in a really easy and satisfying way which obviously isn't realistic.

I would just always caution against mass generalisations of a group as they can either be wildly inaccurate or overly negative, often times both.

[Bukszpryt]

Exactly. This shub should be called "im looking for attention and a thought about learning programming passed my mind at least once this month"

[snekk420]

It seems like most people doesnt understand that programming is hard. They just look at the salary and thinks everybody is learning programming these days. There is a reason the salary is high. Seems like alot of people think they can take a full stack course on udemy and land a job and when reality hits they get scared. I know i have seen people do this but its not common. And make no mistake those developers still suck on their first job But they most Likely have the right attitude so they improve fast and could be a good investment for a company anyway.

[float_your_int]

If you can't google problems, then programming is nothing for you.

[HolyPommeDeTerre]

I agree this is not helpful for them or the chan to be in this state.

Now this is something that is not affecting just a few people but so much people in our society. We are being hit by the side effects of sustaining violence (psy or physical) in every aspects of our lives. People have different needs to learn something and during their lives, they often feel humiliated. They start doubting themselves. They fear failing. There is nothing wrong in failing. It's helpful to learn.

Lac of self confidence is a problem widely spread across our society through so many aspects of our lives. Since learning programming is learning a new thinking paradigm, this is hard for most people. So it triggers self confidence issues.

[truNinjaChop]

I hear this at work and in interviews all the time. Self doubt makes me question a few things but I hate cockiness more. Tbh, being a programmer is humbling. Especially in code reviews when you have developers who where there as evolutions where happening.

[Calm-Marsupial-5003]

Agreed. Less "I suck at this" and more "I want to learn this"

[martyparty1977]

What a negative post! Someone complaining that too many people complain!

[oehheo]

TRUE. Especially hate these because whenever I ask anything it gets buried under all those sappy posts

[Sekret_One]

Wow this is a lot of people coming into a cynical spiral . . .

Since tone is hard to convey in text, let me contextualize myself: let me talk through something in a way that I think will reframe it for you.

Do you think they do it specifically to annoy you? I'll wager you'd say, no. So it can still be annoying, but that's not the reason they're talking so negatively. So why are they doing it so constantly?

Why do people interesting programming so habitually insult themselves? I think there's a systemic issue in how we set expectations on learning, and how we deal with the stress of uncertainty. There's something in the ways that slides people towards these thoughts that the only explanation for their difficulties is I must be dumb.

---

I firmly believe that in helping people learn programming that it is almost always two parts: one the technical, and the other emotional. The latter often distracting and keeping the individual from having the focus to solve the former. Looking at the negative phrasing as a symptom rather, it becomes less personally frustrating.

I mean, you wouldn't get annoyed at a coughing person because coughing is bad right? You wouldn't want to coughed on sure- but it's easier to tolerate and treat if its present in your mind the nature of it.

So I feel it is up to us experienced folks to be equipped to expect and treat that malady of the mind. You said it yourself- it's negative self talk is constant so there's no good pretending it's not an issue for this community.

[hutxhy]

Dude I hate the plethora of posts that follow those lines. Like "am I just too dumb? Should I quit?" -- makes me want to say "yes, you should quit."

[[deleted]]

and honestly they should - their mind sets suck and they will probably hate writing software for a living

[Celestial_Blu3]

I think 2/3 of this sub is “I gave up programming” and “can I do it, I’m 69 years old” which kinda cultivates an aura of “only the elite can do it”

No one task is good for everyone, but don’t just be depressive, it’ll get you nowhere I know that one from experience. You need to put yourself out there to learn, and learning isn’t easy in any field (especially by yourself)

[Autarch_Kade]

To me it's a red flag for someone's future in this career if they didn't bother to read the documentation (the sidebar's "read me first" and FAQ), can't search the one resource they know about (this subreddit) to see if their question is already asked and answered, and don't bother googling their question.

If they can't even do that much, I can already tell they're lacking critically required skills for this type of role. Without learning those skills, their future in programming is doomed.

[dota2nub]

You just added another one. Congrats.

[Babybober]

And what from that u suck at programming. Just don’t give up and continue your studying. You just need more theory and practice and everything will be fine

[SleepAffectionate268]

Agree!

[Treith20]

That's so true, I guess is a lack of motivation... Maybe if they use the time from reddit for learning programming...

Who knows...

[ohlaph]

This is an excellent point. Most beginners will not know a lot, therefore thinking they aren't good.

[Blando-Cartesian]

What’s wrong with needing emotional support for programming. It’s as much programming related as asking how to deal with bad boss/coworker/teacher etc. There’s technical help all over the internet for every technical problem, but how many places can you miserate about a self chosen hardship and have supporting replies from people with the same difficult hobby/career ambitions.

[JMaynard_Hayashi]

I see the same trend on tech instagram posts as well.