News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on If too many users are wrong, it's probably your fault (2011). Parent comment

Re:If too many users are wrong, it's probably your fault (2011) by TeMPOraL on Tuesday January 12, 2016 @09:42PM (#10892023)
I actually read a post today that had a similar story about IKEA-like furniture.

http://dirtsimple.org/2009/05/how-we-get-stuck.html

TL;DR: The author's SO got stuck trying to assemble a kitchen cabinet, and couldn't figure it out. The author looked at the problem, checked with the manual, discovered the solution immediately, and got called smart. The SO didn't even bother. And the author realizes that if their positions were swapped, he wouldn't bother either.

There's something wrong with the whole class of people - that mostly seems to coincide with the "non-tech" group, though maybe it's more about problem-solvers/not problem-solvers. What's wrong is that they get stuck on the first obstacle and give up. Instead of assuming that there must be a simple solution and searching for it, they assume it's broken and quit.

Also, related, the famous XKCD chart: https://xkcd.com/627/.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:If too many users are wrong, it's probably your fault (2011) by jandrese on Tuesday January 12, 2016 @09:58PM (#10892065)
People always look at me like I'm some kind of code wizard when they are stuck on an intractable problem and I figure out it by just reading the compiler's message.

To be fair, compiler messages can be needlessly cryptic, but if you copy and paste the error into Google you'll almost always find someone who did the exact same thing and had it answered quickly.

[ Parent | on HN ]