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
Just an asshole. My experience is different. Know that you learned from others and stood on the shoulders of giants.
The whole “pay it forward” culture is a thing. So next time, ignore that fucker and teach new people.
Because it took 10, 20 years for them to start to know their ass from a hole in the ground. So they take all the pain of their learning experience and lob it back at you whenever you remind them of themselves starting out.
They might also resent newbies for the much better learning materials available today and even the possibility for easy shortcuts (llms). Back then there was no substitute for sitting down and fiddling with it for hours or reading a some poorly-written book.
Being good at programming does not correlate with good people skills or good teaching skills. As you have noticed asking questions on the Internet attracts assholes that want to flex their “intellectual superiority” at others.
Learning programming is hard. Assholes making beginners afraid to ask questions makes it even harder. But I promise you that once you get decent at it, it goes from frustrating to rewarding.
I think there’s a few different things worth addressing here, so please bear with me since this might be a long reply.
What you experienced here is, unfortunately, very common for anyone getting into tech. A lot of us can recall the first time reaching out somewhere for help and receiving a mixture of belittlement and vague answers as a response. I’d argue it’s probably one of the biggest issues we have in this space.
If I had to guess why tech forums are so vitriolic to newcomers, I’d say a lot of us simply forgot what it was like to be inexperienced. They forgot how daunting it is to want to learn, to run headfirst into a bunch of errors you barely understand, and then try navigating a sea of concepts and terminology that practically requires a dictionary of its own.
While the forums rarely get better (unfortunately), never let those people drive you away. It’s incredibly overwhelming at first, and there’s a lot of us who are long overdue for a slice of humble pie, but someday things will start to click and the things you want to do will start to come to life.
It’s late, I’m rambling, but you’ll your footing. When you do I hope you get the satisfaction of telling one of those assholes on the forums to shove it while giving another newcomer the welcome they need
It’s funny, right? These dudes will simultaneously decry new programmers relying on AI to teach them but then will also turn around and mock and troll new users like duh… I’d talk to the ai too!
You’re absolutely right!
Seriously though, that’s a great point.
Gamer culture I am assuming?
Btw they weren’t ignoring you, they just didn’t know the answer themselves and wanted to hide it.
I’m sorry this happened to you. Just know that there are assholes everywhere, and they often tend to be the most vocal, especially when they can hide behind anonymity. Try not to let them discourage you.
Which forum lol?
RTFM
~(but seriously, best attempt is to post wrong code and claim it’s the best solution for a problem - you will be instantly corrected)~
That has never worked for me. People actually upvoted my wrong code and said it was correct when I tried this.
The manual: -f fleep the floop -k accepts a specifically formatted string which is not described here -h prints this message
Who wrote this manual: me
I’m very sorry this happened to you. Please don’t let some assholes discourage you. It’s a great profession, and can be a lot of fun.
Nothing makes some sad sacks feel better about themselves than making fun of someone for not knowing what they have learned. Just know they have been pants on their heads stupid about something and had to ask for help. Count on it.
Whilst dealing with this kind of asshole in a work environment is a lot more complex, online they’re like dogs barking behind a wall - only doing it because they’re aggressive simpletons and isolated from any problems from doing it - and just as unworthy of consideration or attention as one.
They really only have any impact on you when you give them more importance than they deserve.
Also keep in mind that these people are at the lower end of expertise and professionalism: top experts don’t waste time with talking shit like that, they’ll just either teach you or (most likely) ignore you because they think that stuff is too basic and not worth their time, and professionals are used to being professional and shit-talking ain’t being professional - even in expertise terms these people are unimportant.
IRC is still pretty popular with programmers and in my experience people are helpful on the various tech channels (on libera.chat at least)
…what is is to be a woman in STEM. and why a lot of women leave and why it’s a sausage party. And also why women online often disguise themselves even in games.
That being said I suggest this when some rando online is trying to pressure you: when a person is so fragile to be easily annoyed by your existence: exist harder. They are the fool for giving you such power. Lean into it. Ask more questions. Watch them stir in their seat overreacting.
Cuz one thing I’ve learned is when you are that brave: there are twice as many newbies hiding around you thinking you’re awesome for asking all the hard questions.
Don’t delete because of some elitist assholes. Leave it up for the other newbies. Get more newbies up in their business.
The women I’ve met in STEM both during my college days and in my career have always been far more welcoming and willing to share their expertise than the lions share of men.
Never going to forget the TA I went to back when I was a freshman who not only juggled 5 different people asking questions but helped take a concept I was struggling with and made it clear as day.
The trades are the same way, unfortunately. When the first woman apprentice showed up, all these guys started acting like they’ve never seen a woman before.
The quiet guy who I thought was one of the nicest people there told the apprentice that she belonged in an office. Others wouldn’t let her do anything “dangerous” or over explained all the simple shit to her. Others would just hang around her for uncomfortable periods of time. It was truly bizarre to witness.
She ended up only coming to me for work related questions because I was one of the few people who treated her like a person and not like a little girl. That’s how I found out all the gross and fucked up things the guys were saying to her. She didn’t last long and left for another company which already had women working there. I worked until I got terminated for bringing up issues with the work culture.
During the fight about work culture with management, the vast majority of my coworkers turned their backs on me. Treated me like an idiot and isolated me. They were all so fragile and scared they would have to change their awful ways.
I ended up quitting my apprenticeship and decided to never return to the trades. I can’t stand the culture and I no longer have the energy to fight alone.
Any woman that can remain in the trades or STEM is way stronger than I’ll ever be. I couldn’t imagine myself dealing with that shit daily for an entire life.
I hear you. Yes, It’s definitely easier when there are at least already one or two women already present.
But sometimes you have to watch your back sometimes even then. Cuz there can be the ‘pickme’ ladies that lean into the misogyny. I’ve come by some real toxic ones that had rap sheets of other victims all women that had bundled together and basically had group therapy about the same woman.
That’s where I start saving every single email they (the toxic ones) send me. I’ve taken one or two out in my day just on ‘accidently’ forwarding an email they sent me they thought they had me too intimidated to send. I was just biding my time giving them false confidence.
Strength sometimes takes a lot of patience to help a person fuck up in front of the wrong line of people.
Document everything.
Though I’m hoping current days are getting better where this kind of toxicity is easier to call out. I’ve notice some of the more recent places of work that they even encourage and prefer calling it out in the moment with HR and not having it be dealt with in such a chaotic way. Though that can also be dependent on how good your HR is. (Watch out for HR using the catch phrase ‘conflicting personalities’ is a dead give away you got a dud HR)
Strength sometimes takes a lot of patience to help a person fuck up in front of the wrong line of people.
That’s very much what I did. While causing noise with management, I made friends with someone who worked for corporate HR. My first email to her basically predicated what would happen if I raised a complaint to management. I gained her trust by focusing on changing the work culture and not looking for retribution.
I got terminated, lawyers got involved and in the end I got a my severance and banned from working with that international corporate. The HR manager of my company was forced into leaving the company before her retirement. If I didn’t play nice with corporate HR, the company HR manager would have probably worked until retirement like nothing happened.
I now have a new hate for bureaucracy that’s on a deep and personal level but at least I came out with some wins at the cost of some sanity.
Yikes yeah that place sounds rotten to the core. I’m glad you got out of it and hope you found safer ground ! Glad you kept your sanity too. That can be a challenge in such situations where you can feel the walls closing in.
Which country was that in, may I ask?
Canada
This is why I do actually use AI - teach and troubleshoot. Infinite patience is something technicians do not possess. Rather the opposite. Claude will happily spend hours explaining things or asking me background questions, or letting me ask questions I would be afraid to ask otherwise. I hated having to spend an hour or two simply researching for the QUESTION I wanted to ask so that people wouldn’t accuse me of being an idiot, because I used the wrong terminology or something. I still encounter this from other sysadmins at work, so I often ask Claude if my question makes sense or if there’s chance for confusion. As a result I actually learn a lot more, a LOT faster, and get the rough touch so much less.
Definitely a positive there. It might not always give you the right answer or lead you down the wrong path from time to time, but I’ve always found it to at least give me a good enough direction to go in rather than spending the next hour trying to find the right set of key words on google to find my answer
