Re:Friction Between Programming Professionals and Beginners
by kbenson on Wednesday February 10, 2016 @12:38PM
(#11074397)
> Ask yourself, would this be the answer you give to a 12 year old girl who's taken an early interest in programming? Or a single mother who's trying to switch careers to improve her lot in life? Or your own mother, for that matter? Is it really constructive to be so abrasive?
An important bit of context is implicit in both your comments, and I think the context is different, which is where some of the differences in your stances are.
It's very important to know the purpose of the asker when answering a question. If the little girl or a single mother are trying to accomplish a single thing, right now, and their purpose is not to learn, then yes, just answer the question or don't bother commenting. If their purpose seems to be to learn, then teaching them both skills on how to better teach themselves and on better ways to approach the problem are ultimately more useful.
Does it really help that single mother trying to switch careers more to be told how to fix her HTML parsing regex[1], or would she be better served with a suggestion on a library that provided a more sane way to accomplish that capability? Of course, as a community we could do better at being more civil, and providing both answers, but if ever there was a place where the "teach a man to fish" parable fit, this is it.
1: Not to start an inflammatory discussion on that. I regularly use regexen to parse well formed specific HTML pages. The trick is knowing where it's appropriate and where it's not.
An important bit of context is implicit in both your comments, and I think the context is different, which is where some of the differences in your stances are.
It's very important to know the purpose of the asker when answering a question. If the little girl or a single mother are trying to accomplish a single thing, right now, and their purpose is not to learn, then yes, just answer the question or don't bother commenting. If their purpose seems to be to learn, then teaching them both skills on how to better teach themselves and on better ways to approach the problem are ultimately more useful.
Does it really help that single mother trying to switch careers more to be told how to fix her HTML parsing regex[1], or would she be better served with a suggestion on a library that provided a more sane way to accomplish that capability? Of course, as a community we could do better at being more civil, and providing both answers, but if ever there was a place where the "teach a man to fish" parable fit, this is it.
1: Not to start an inflammatory discussion on that. I regularly use regexen to parse well formed specific HTML pages. The trick is knowing where it's appropriate and where it's not.