I assume when most people here on HN run into a problem, their first thought isn’t, “who can I ask?” but instead, “how can I figure it out?” because most hacker types are naturally curious and relish an opportunity to learn something new.
In my experience most people who zero interest in learning something new when they encounter something they don’t know.
Is this really so? With respect, this take seems too cynical to me. I say this as a person to whom many come when they can't figure things out.
I often initially feel much like you do, but I temper that feeling with the knowledge that the asker is likely under delivery pressure, etc and has to subvert their curiosity in order to maintain velocity.
Yes, sometimes people will simply take the expedient option, but I often get the feeling they never even tried on their own, like even a little bit.
Coming from IT, in the industry, even questions about software (very specialized, to be honest) get useless results.
I think the openess of information in software is the exception, not the norm, though many fields like science are making improvements.
Eventually, as my knowledge of the field increased I learned the "pro" terminology for certain objects and processes, which improved my ability to search useful info. I also discovered through chance or personal recommendation some very useful pro-level online sources, which don't have a large presence on search engines. There was a long grind of several years before I got to the point where I could search online for machining information and solutions online with confidence that I could find useful results and assess their reliability. Even then, there is a lot that I need to find in books/manuals or in conversation with experts.
While this is a process that takes place when learning about any technical topic, in my experience its easier in programming (and to a lesser degree general IT topics) than in fields that exist primarily in the world of physical objects. IMO, this has something to do with the tendency of programming problems to "self-define" themselves in specific textual language (I.E. compiler errors you can copy and paste into google) and also with origins and focuses of the largest internet knowledge bases.
For many people, they are used to learning from other people instead of from search results. So it makes sense that their first instinct is to reach for asking those around them.
* A trivial technological problem that leaves my family helpless though it's literally the first hit on Google
* A critical life-impacting issue, usually health but sometimes things like taxes or mortgage or household maintenance - things where trustworthy experts exist and are readily available here - and they go to random sketchy Facebook groups and get random advice from random people (frequently involving Crystals or essential oils but I digress into whole other rant :P )
This becomes a problem when the personal network is made of people who rely on hearsay, and signals-of-belonging instead of evidence-based information.
It's also a problem when "official" experts aren't truly expert, for various possible reasons - including corruption, incompetence, deliberate bad faith, and others.
It's hard for people who think in one way to understand that others don't think in the same ways.
We did this in a public middle school around 2002-2003 with boolean searches. Was this unique to my experience or has this been a common thing for awhile?
When I was briefly in sales before becoming a developer, I had a co-worker who, for the life of her, could not remember how to do a soft-line break in MS Word. She literally would ask me at least once a day. I finally just printed the keystroke (shift + return) on a sheet of paper and when she would peer over the cube, I'd just hold it up and she'd sit down again.
Even in our sales group, the majority knew to use Google to get answers to all kinds of technical questions. But you're right, there's still a big group of people who are unaware or too lazy to go there first.
For everything else, my brain takes some time to make that leap.
I had something similar to that when I was in elementary school, including comparing results across search engines. Boolean searches plus Smart Selection of keywords would quickly lead you to good sources.
Sometime between when I graduated high school and 2016, most of those tricks stopped working reliably. Google, Bing, and DDG are the only games in town for the anglophone world and all three drown out the worthwhile results in reposted blog spam. Until you magically discover the shibboleth that directs you to actual information, you’re stuck in a hell of shitty how-to websites that have nearly-identical irrelevant information.
It’s less hassle and more accurate (though slower and possibly outdated) to directly ask a known local expert.
- comparing different search engines (to google, mostly)
- seeing if you can find patent numbers, etc.
- and the best, I mix up a bunch of "real" and "fake" sites
(e.g., the Carbon Monoxide awareness site and then the Dihydrogen Monoxide site, and giggle as they critique that the second one needs a better web designer and needs to be more professional...)
There's a ton of information now and it's not always intuitive to understand what information you should value and when.
Not as much as SEO "how to break search" opportunities.
My parents, in-laws, etc... they all say on a pretty regular basis that they have trouble finding what they're searching for. Google tries really hard to return relevant results (which actually annoys me because I really, really, really want it to search for exactly what I typed - by default.)
It’s probably natural for most folks on HN to consider “googling problems” an obvious, basic first solution - but I’m always stunned by how many people in real life, outside of the IT industry, don’t have that path in their brains well-trodden. For some reason, they’d rather flail around or ask a real human (often me) for help, rather than type a couple words into a search bar and see what happens.
I wonder if there’s an opportunity to teach a “how to search” class in schools. You could have some fun open-Google exams!