I asked a question on a forum about why a command wasn’t working. They said I didn’t have an interpreter installed on my computer and were making fun of me. I showed them that I had one installed and that wasn’t the problem, but they continued to talk sarcastically to me without explaining anything. Only one of them suggested the cause of the problem, and he was right, so I thanked him. Then another guy said that if I couldn’t figure it out myself, I should do something else and that he was tired of people like me. After that, I deleted my question, and now I’m not sure. And I don’t think I want to ask for help ever again
please do not delete your question. it could easily help someone else who has the same issue. by deleting it, you are throwing away the work of the person who took the time to answer it.
Unfortunately there’s a lot of pretentious and impatient assholes in this field.
That being said, IRL, I’ve had coworkers that are assholes, and I’ve had coworkers that have been the most amazing people. Just depends on who’s on your team and who you have to interact with.
I run into people like that at work and what I’ve discovered is they have no idea they’re being rude. Some people in technology are genuinely that out of touch.
people suck online because there’s zero physical consequences to being rude. this isn’t a problem on forums like the one you visited, but all of them tbh
It’s a certain kind of people. In a word, they are focused.
Within the circle of their focus they are gentle, deep, subtle and wise. Without, clumsy, crude and violent.
The realm of good manners is in that outside part.
Do I know why that happened to you? No, just guessing.
What I do know though: if it was like some replies here suggest, that it’s all due to IT folks not playing well with others, then forums like stack overflow wouldn’t exist.
What I also know: I’ve been to a lot of forums, not all IT related, and I met quite a few people online who just love to be rude, regardless of the topic.
So if I had to guess why, I’d say because they are assholes, not because it was an IT forum.
I just created an account to tell you, if you would like, I would be super happy to either answer that question you had, or if I don’t know the answer show you how I research problems related to programming or archotecture or algo or whatever needs done to finish a project. I’ve been in IT for 20 years now. What you experienced is the very thing I’ve dedicated my career to correcting.
Fuck rude gatekeeping assholes, knowledge is for everyone.
Report the rude assholes. Genuinely not knowing something while genuinely asking for knowledge should never be shat on.
I dont know why some people are assholes. You asked a beginner level question on a forum that allows, I’m assuming, beginners to ask questions. I hope this never happens to you again. Some of us enjoy working with sincere, curious beginners.
There are ways to talk to these condescending sarcastic assholes. But fuck them. I sorry they were hurtful and I hope you find people who want to go with you on your journey with you.
Techie folks tend to lack social skills.
The short answer is the people you interacted with are assholes. The stereotype of IT people is that they don’t know how to play with others. Just because it is a Stereotype doesn’t mean it is not earned.
Am IT guy can confirm. We tend to be misanthropic loners. Bad “bedside manner” is an industry-wide problem. That’s why the A+ certification has a section on customer service skills.
Every stereotype stems from a bit of truth
And everything has an exception.
I mean if we’re throwing around one liners here.
A lot more than a bit.
Yup. There is a guy who responds to every question in the Linux forum like we all have 3 degrees in Linux CLI. he’s an asshole, whether his solution is correct or not.
Why do you think they went into a profession where they communicate primarily with a machine?
They may have entered the profession thinking they wouldn’t have to talk to people, but I just want to point out that this is not at all what the profession actually looks like. You have to constantly talk to people, to work out the requirements that the customer actually needs and exchange knowledge with your team mates. If someone is not a team player, that is the absolute quickest way to get thrown out.
I believe they feel they have power and are superior to you because they have more knowledge. And you know how people tend to act in that circumstances.
Still?? The elitist culture threw me off programming over twenty years ago. I really thought and hoped it had changed
It really depends on the team. We don’t all suck.
Unfortunately, the teams that do suck are also the ones who are constantly hiring.
Yeah I know. I forgot to mention I ended up as a programmer anyway and I’ve met tons of wonderful colleagues. I just hoped the elitist culture had gone away
it will never change because some people never learn.
I used to bend over backwards for new devs to help them. what I realized after some time that at least 75% of those devs never learned anything and continued to cling to me for help. my quality and work/life balance suffered from it.
now, I give help. once. I do not repeat myself, and helping is the last thing I do. work, life, balance.
I know I come off as cold or an asshole, but that’s purposeful. I want new devs to learn the way we all learned, through time and pain. nothing worthwhile ever came so easily in this world.
Yeah I guess. I take the middle ground I guess. I’ll gladly help, but I won’t go out of my way unless they really show determination. I often explain that to succeed as a programmer, you need to enjoy grinding away at a problem for hours at end just to enjoy the progress it is to get to that new problem
Not the most motivating live, but I believe it’s honest
Without seeing the entirety of the interaction, it’s hard to be sure.
Some people are assholes, and because nobody wants to interact with assholes, they usually end up congregating on whatever forum doesn’t ban them. Moderation is hard and ban evasion is often easy, so there end up being a lot of places like that.
The other side is that people in general ask a lot of bad questions, and a forum flooded with bad questions becomes useless because people who could answer good questions either get tired of it and leave, or spend so much time on the bad questions they don’t have time for the good ones. People get frustrated when they think that’s happening to a forum they enjoy, and programmers are famously better at communicating with machines than with people.
Here’s are some tips to ask good questions about programming:
- First, try to find the answer without asking other people. This is especially important when it comes to programming because the whole job is problem-solving. That means figuring out how a search result, LLM output, or published documentation relates to whatever it is you’re trying to do.
- Once you’re sure you need help from other people, clearly articulate what it is you want to happen, what you tried in order to achieve it, and what actually happened. Use more detail than you think you need here, especially regarding your expectations. Sometimes the mere act of composing a question this way leads you to the answer, which is effective enough there’s a popular technique of explaining problems to inanimate objects.
- Include the troubleshooting steps you tried from the first step above in your question. By typing it out, you may discover an error or omission in your process, but you also communicate to other people that you’re not just being lazy, wasting their time, and reducing the signal to noise ratio of their forum.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html <-- this too
I had that in mind, but it’s been a while since I read it and skimming it today, it seems a little dated. The tone may also be a bit harsh to offer to OP in this thread.
A little bit dated, but it seems like it has been receiving updates. There is a whole section at the bottom now about how to answer questions (ie. don’t be an asshole). I really want to emphasize that idea. Lots of FOSS communities now have codes of conduct which I find useful in mitigating this behavior, too.
As for the tone, it definitely has an ivory tower, individualism, pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, slanted view but I don’t think it unduly burdens a newbie to learn how to teach themselves by ensuring they’ve exhausted all the typical avenues of stored knowledge before bothering someone with a well-crafted question. It is a self-sufficiency that has very positive returns in the future.
Without more context, it is difficult to say how justified OP is in their read of the situation. Maybe the forum posters weren’t really out of line because the general topic was #random and OP asked in the wrong place?
