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
Because there is a huge demographic of nerds that are actually chuds and learned absolutely nothing from being bullied and/or being a beginner when they were younger.
I bet you can picture the demographic that they overlap with, but I’ma try not to explicitly make this political.
I assume the motivation for a lot of people to go online and answer people’s technical questions is to puff up their ego
Some people are just dick. There might be a bigger crossover between programmers and socially inadequate people, but thankfully it’s not a complete overlap (I hope).
Hopefully you’ll find saner people somewhere else. It’s fine being snarky with people you know and know can handle it, but doing so with stranger online really looks bad moist of the time.
If you asked the question properly and they still gave you more grief than help, then it’s their fault for sure.
Without knowing the context - that’s key both questions, the one you asked then and the one you’re asking now - we can’t be sure what happened. And I’m not going to jump to conclusions about how much context you started with in your actual question because that is no help to you.
I say point us to the question – and accept we’re going to answer honestly.
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’ll take it a step further and say that most of the people I’ve worked with have been amazing. Really just some very enjoyable people to be around.
Something about the field though seems to really attract the super assholes and they’re so assholish that they color the perception of the whole field.
It’s really unfortunate how a very loud, very obnoxious minority can have such an outsized impact.
I agree. I had one super asshole on my team a while back and it was hell. I dreaded every meeting. Once he left I realized how much I enjoy everyone else on my team. Lot of really great folks.
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
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.
Did you practice due diligence of RTFM (reading the fucking manual) & researching the problem earnestly before asking a question that requests people to commit their time to answer it (ie, were you considerate), and did you show the effort you had put into answering the question yourself & what insights you gained before getting stuck? That’s usually it. No one appreciates their time wasted by poor effort.
I used to work with a programmer who would schedule meetings with IT subject matter experts of systems we were working on integrating. Instead of doing the research in advance & coming prepared with meaningful questions, he’d waste their time (and mine!) with questions he could have answered by reading public documentation. It was infuriating.
All of this. It should also be said that if you don’t understand something in the manual that’s ok too, but at least do a quick search to see if you can solve it. You ask when you bottom out, not to skip effort.
Sometimes you may even find that there are 2 or 3 things you could try and you want some help before investing too much more time (as long as you invested some).
Thank you, NSFW enjoyer.
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.
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.
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.
Welcome!
Report the rude assholes. Genuinely not knowing something while genuinely asking for knowledge should never be shat on.
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.
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.
