The programming community needs an attitude adjustment.

I am relatively new to the programming community. For 7 years I was a digital artist developing 2d and 3D work for games, Virtual reality apps, Xbox360 and Microsoft products. I have always worked along side programmers and though some of them may have had social issues that I learned to accept and adapt to, I generally felt programmers were respectable, fun-loving, inspirational people. However I was not prepared for the level of immaturity that I would face in some of the programming community itself when I actually started getting into programming.

Simply from just browsing programming related discussion threads here and other places on the internet I literally couldn't stand how rude programmers are to fellow programmers, especially the ones who are just getting into programming. Maybe the community simply doesn't realize but many programmers just talk down to any questions that aren't to their programming standards and try to make people feel like idiots. During my 12 year digital art career I never encountered artists who treated other artists with as much disrespect as many programmers do; without even the slightest hesitation.

Suffice to say I personally have not received bad treatment however when reading the threads here, i see the attitude problems against others far to often. Perhaps I have just been unlucky and frequently ran into some of the "bad eggs" of the community. Considering I've been at programming since september, this could very well be the case.
But if not, I am appalled at the disrespectful level at which many programmers treat other programmers in the programming community. It's childish and needs to stop.

What are your thoughts, do you agree or am I just unlucky in my browsing thus far? Perhaps the majority of the programming community is actually full of passionate individuals who are inspired and even look up to other programmers and I simply have not met them yet.

 

Been reading Stack Overflow, huh?

The biggest annoyance I find on such sites is people who ask "why?" to a programming question. Sometimes people just want to do a thing, but some bastards want to know every detail of why. They never suggest alternate approaches, of course, and when the original poster justifies their need they don't get anymore responses from the negative Nellies.

 

I've been learning as well. I've concluded that there is almost no need to ever ask a question, someone else has already asked it in some fashion and/or it has been picked apart for an answer.

I've found that very little of the answers I need come from SO other than some nice fundamentals and best practice ideas. The majority of my answers come from the unity scripting reference, msdn, and unity answers and threads around here in the scripting section that tend to have scripted solutions to stuff that I can take a look at and understand. Most people are pretty nice around here on the forum and on Answers.

I don't really like the attitude of a lot of the responses I see on the web, especially on stack overflow and the lower level sites. They'll straight up put a questions on terminal level 5 critical lockdown because they felt it was too basic. I guess with a site that big it becomes more of a necessity to filter things, but again, i dont see much use in asking questions unless its very specific and I cant seem to find anything anywhere in my searches. I feel like I learn more when I can dig through a similar question and understand how to apply it to my situation rather than getting a direct answer to my own question.

 

Haha yep the Unity Community seems a bit more mature than the overall Programming community in Stack Overflow. sounds like you know what I'm talking about then lol.

I completely agree. Even if the individual isn't literally calling the OP or their question "stupid" they might as well be when they say things like "why". Every programmer was once a beginner, why can't people just remember that and if they don't want to answer the question, don't say anything at all. The programming community has great potential if working together but negative-nancies like that only prohibit growth and creates individualists rather than teamwork I believe.

Oh yes I have yet to ask a programming related question myself. I've only been using pre answered questions in other forums and here and the Unity documentation. But when I do read many of the replies in programming related threads, often times it's just painful to read due to how immature and disrespectful they can be.

 

I wouldn't say it is just programmers who are that way. I have read many posts from artists who (when giving feedback on a new game developer's game) seem to look for things to criticize... the lighting is off, the shadow on the third rock from the left is just wrong, the textures look horrrible. A lot of is probably in how you read it. I like to think all of these people are actually trying to help even when seeming overly negative and / or rude. Also keep in mind many of the programmers may not even be programmers. They may be asking why wanting every detail because they want to know for their own education.

 

We have a couple basic situations on these forums with those who are just beginning to learn programming. We have those who want assistance learning and those who cannot find a solution.

Now you would think someone who was capable of getting on the Internet, find their way to the Unity site, and navigate to the forums would have noticed the "Learn" section. Yet so many of these people repeatedly ask where to learn Unity. It gets even better when there are multiple threads with the exact same question practically next to each other.

Then we have those who are incapable of performing so much as a basic search. I will admit that sometimes the answers are not easy to find with a search but my experience has been that using Google to find a solution is often very effective. It may take multiple searches, refining the terms based on previous results, but more often than not I've found the answer that way.

There are times when the answer is rude, but I think you need to consider the possibility of the question being viewed as rude too. Often times these two situations I mentioned are done with little to no effort on the part of the poster as if they expect everything handed to them. As someone who has been programming for about two decades, I can tell you they won't progress very far as programmers if they cannot perform their own research.

 

I don't think you're wrong, @Galactic_Muffin (hilarious name, btw). I'm a developer myself, albeit one with plenty to learn still. I tend to write far too verbosely, so I'll use bullet points to try to keep thoughts organized:

• I've worked at several agencies as a front end web developer, so I worked closely with designers. In my personal experience, the designers were more likely to talk crap about each other's work behind their backs, but were fairly constructive face-to-face. Us developers had a good rapport with each other, and NEVER acted as disrespectfully towards each other as you see on the Internet.
• The Internet, in general, has an issue with attitude. Anonymity seems to encourage people to be jerks, because they don't have to worry about the consequences they'd suffer if they acted that way to someone on the street (getting socked in the face).
• Programming is hard. Writing good code is a skill that takes a lot of experience and effort to acquire. I think this makes a certain type of person feel resentful when, in their opinion, someone else is trying to benefit from their hard work without having to go through the pain they did. I don't understand why these people are even answering questions on a help system, then, but... that seems to be the way they feel.
• Sometimes these "meanies" are just having a bad day and are frustrated by people who don't Google something before asking. Not a good excuse for being a jerk, but understandable in a way, sorta.

I do find these forums to be a lot better than most places for helping new programmers. You're still going to find jerks and people who just want to pick on others, but due to Unity being a relatively new platform (compared to something like a C++ forum, for example), I think there are less people who feel like they've been doing this for so long that anyone new hasn't earned their right to be there or whatever. Let's see if that stays the case over the next 5 years.

 

That's a perfect example of someone who doesn't want to put in the hard work of going through all the tutorials or trial-and-error. What they're really asking is "How can I learn all this stuff without having to do a lot of difficult, boring stuff?", and that understandably draws the ire of the people who did have to learn the hard way.

 

I think Schneider21 hit it on the head. The Internet in general are a bunch of jerks. I mean, look at the vid of the dude that got swatted while streaming, he is nearly in tears and people are posting what a #&*@( he is and calling him names. The anonymity of the Internet makes people turn into complete #*(@holes. It's getting worse and worse as I feel this culture is breeding worse culture.

I'd say the Unity forums are quite pleasant and it is because of moderation, and money making. No one wants to come off as being a jerk when they are trying to sell their asset for hard cash, and then get banned.

 

Almost nobody :/

 

True. Could be because I'm just not used to how the community operates. One thing that I have learned when people join the artist community for the first time is they tend to take critiques very hard. Critiques are an essential element of improving as an artist. All seasoned artists seek criticism from other artists and are appreciative of them when the opportunity arises. However most artists know of a specific etiquette formula for properly giving critiques.
Critique etiquette:

1) First, always look for the things that the artist you are critiquing did right. Point out and explain why they were well done. Use constructive words in praises like: "The lighting you did here is spot on" or "you did an excellent job with"
2) Then follow up with a recap of what you felt they did well and then transition the conversation to point out the things you feel they could do better. For example "so yea, you did a great job with the color and lighting here. it really makes the character pop and feel alive. However some of the things that i feel could use improvement are..."
3) Then go into detail about the things you think they could improve on. Never use words like "bad" "this sucks" "or "horrible" and always say "I feel you should" rather than "you need to".

I Rarely meet artists who go about a critique the way you described and if I do, I usually tell them to be more respectful. However I have learned that people who are new to the artist community who get proper critiques still tend to take them negatively because they are not used to hearing things or want to hear things they could improve on; so even if the critic doesn't use words like "this is bad" or "this sucks" That is simply just how it sounds to anyone who receives constructive criticism and are not used to the critique process.

If any artist went to art school like they should have, they will know of this Critique etiquette and follow it. If they don't it will be very hard for them to get any good feedback themselves.

Perhaps the programming community should adopt a similar feedback etiquette process because as of right now, i feel every programmer has a gun being held to their head that will fire the moment they ask for any sort of question or for feedback.

 

It may be what you're interpreting as "rude" is actually just straightforward, no-nonsense posting, which may come across as rude because of the limited social cues (i.e., text-only). Unless you're talking about outright insults, but I haven't seen that with programmers any more than any other group.

--Eric

 

I almost said something like this, until I realized I don't agree.

For one thing, I'm willing to bet that almost nobody asking these programming questions that are being answered rudely actually went to school for computer science. Not super related, just a difference in the two demographics.

Secondly, you really dialed in on it with your last statement. Design is a lot about feel. Sure there are proper and improper ways to do specific things like shadowing and placement of vertices in models, but in general, Design has a lot more leeway in what is good/bad*.

With programming, there is a much more clearly defined right and wrong way to do things. Even if something works, it could still be wrong because of its potential to cause memory leaks, or lack of following encapsulation principles, etc. So there's not really room for an "I feel" comment, when the real answer is more "Do it like this if you want it to be right" kind of deal.

Granted, there are definitely tactful and respectful ways of relating this information, and that is what is missing from the situation.

* - Developer opinion

 

See this could be a simple matter of perspective. You, as an artist, may be able to relate better to other artists. When they write something that may come across as negative to non-artists you may see it as them being helpful. Similarly, like Eric said when a programmer is trying to help with no nonsense explanation it may come across to non-programmers as rude and arrogant. Yet to other programmers it may seem like they were just being helpful. Just something to consider.

I do agree with the others who say a big part of the issue is not programmers, artists or any other group of people. Instead just the anonymity of the Internet. That is spot on I think. People can act like complete a-holes online because they can hide behind their little cell screens and computer monitors. If they acted that way in real life they would likely get an ass whooping. But online they can get away with it so it brings the a-holiness out in them.

 

Ah yes good point. In art there is no right way to do something, it's all subjective. At least when it comes to the end product.
But because of the nature of programming and that there is a right and wrong way to do things; I feel programmers almost need to be even more careful with the way they provide help or feedback if their intent is to truly provide help and not humiliation.
Something like "Oh ok I see what you are doing, clever work around and use of the ... method and it will do what you want but it is notorious for creating memory leaks. To prevent that, use this method instead:..." would be a good way of providing feedback on what's right or wrong. But I often find people using unnecessary extra praises like "why would you do that..." and "you don't know what you are doing, go read documentation" why waste the breath if the point is not to humiliate?

Indeed. The internet is no excuse to treat other people. PEOPLE let me remind, with disrespect.

 

Another thing to remember is that the interpretation of a post is based off of the personality of the reader of that post. Where one person would interpret a post as rude or hostile another person reading it will interpret it as constructive criticism etc.

The OP is making one very big mistake. Analyze the wording used in the first post and you'll hopefully understand what mistake the OP is making.

Example Below:

The part I quoted uses a sweeping generalization of the programming community. The OP is tarnishing the whole programming community as immature and is also stating that they were not prepared for what they discovered.

Looking at that it speaks volumes about the readiness of the OP to communicate in a way that doesn't involve a rant where they start a thread to accuse the whole programming community of being immature.

If anything it shows just how immature the OP is.

 

I apologize if thats how you interpreted my OP I was not declaring that I felt the whole community was this way as I ended the post with a clear explanation that this interpretation is simply from my experience thus far and that I was giving the community the benefit of the doubt that I was merely "unlucky" in my searches. I have fixed the first line it to make it more clear. However I thought I had made my meaning very clear further down. If you read the part where I say:

and then i continue to say:

This shows that I was recognizing that my overall exposure of the programming community thus far may be causing a skewed representation for the rest of the community. I'm essentially recognizing the fact that my experience and understanding of the programming community could be inaccurate and want to know people's opinion on the subject in hopes to get a more accurate interpretation.
I don't know about what you believe and i don't have a right to judge your definition of 'maturity' but for me; a person recognizing that there is a possibility that oneself may be wrong and giving other's opinions the benefit of the doubt is the opposite of immature.
Considering that, there was no reason for you to get the interpretation that you did from that excerpt you quoted from my post assuming you appropriately read and understood the rest of my post.

Continuing down my posts you will also see that I am specifically talking about the implied and literal insults that I often see on the forums; insults that one could interpret from phrases similar to the one you have here: "If anything it shows just how immature the OP is." Which can be interpreted as Spiting and can offend some people.
Or perhaps a better example of what i mean by "insults" is one of your many posts on other threads such as this one:

Perhaps this post of yours was also supposed to be interpreted differently?

 

Real life human interaction skews towards friendliness, compliments, and courtesy. The Internet is an upside down version of that and skews towards rudeness, insults, and hostility. It will be the end of us all.

Welcome!

 

while(1)

 

Removing a quote from the context it belonged to and shortening it further will make it seem odd or inappropriate. I've linked the specific post below so that it won't confuse anyone. Reading the entire thing makes it easier to understand what is going on and why the post was made.

It may be a bit strongly worded but Amon had a very good point. The only reason the OP was trying to recover his account was because he personally lost something. It didn't bother the OP in the slightest that he stole from Unity. If anything he tried to justify his reasons.

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/how-do-i-recover-my-account.294929/#post-1943934

 

lol

 

Amon has a history of being rude in his posts. And thats exactly my point not so much the reason why or the context. just simply being rude in general. Even if the person you are talking to "deserves it", still doesn't give you the right to be an indecent person because when it comes down to it whatever the person deserves is completely subjective. For example most of the insults I see are in many threads are against people who asked a "stupid" question. Again subjective and does not in any way, shape, or form, ask people to respond to ignorance with hostility and hatred.

 

There are only so many ways you can beautify a post without hiding the point.

 

Perhaps in that case he may have had a point but In all of this posts? He was right to call people names, humiliate, and belittle people in all of his posts? it seems in most of his post history he is attacking in one way or another whether justified or not. And thats what I'm trying to say. That's the problem that I keep seeing.

Im really not trying to point fingers, All I'm trying to say is if anyone agrees with me that there can be improvement within the programming community when answering questions and just being a human being to one another, can we please do it in a decent manner? Forget that competitive side and ego and just take opportunities to answer questions as ways to improve yourself and your own understanding/skills. Build upon each other's achievements and lift people up instead of breaking them down. lets start being an example for that.

 

Can't say I agree with you, there. For someone who openly admits to stealing not just the Unity engine itself, but assets that people like us work hard to create only to make a meagre profit from, and then says they don't do it anymore only because they were caught, they were afraid of the police, and they didn't want to get viruses anymore (not because they realize the error of their ways and that what they're doing is morally wrong), why do they deserve to be treated with the respect they fail to demonstrate towards others?

It's one thing if someone asks a dumb question without Googling first and gets permanently marked and ridiculed around the forums. But getting a bit of sass isn't necessarily creating a hostile environment, either.

I feel like I'm starting to flip flop on the issue, but the more I think about it, even the Internet sort of has a way of balancing itself out. The goons get treated like goons, and the people who help out tend to get helped out in return. It's not perfect, sure, but in a way, it's still in a better state than the real world is in some ways.

 

Do you typically make sweeping generalizations? I did a quick check of his post content, at least for the initial page of the search, and I could only really pick out three incidents at most.

 

This seems like something best discussed in private conversation if you have a personal issue with Amon.

Any one of us may interpret things differently. Your recent posts, for example, I am interpreting as Amon has "rubbed you in the wrong way" and so the purpose of this whole thread is ultimately to single Amon out and publicly chastise him even reposting a comment made to another person who was clearly in the wrong.

Why not just discuss the matter with Amon in private?

 

In defense of rudeness:

• Very few questions have not been asked yet. If googling your question title comes up with a good solution, you deserve to be burned.
• Direct answers are more valuable. There are right and wrong ways to code. Pointing out a fatal flaw as quickly as possible is a kindness. Otherwise you can end up spending months on something that is fundamentally broken.
• Use case is important. Asking 'why would you want to do that?' helps define the use case. Often questioners are going down the wrong path to start with, and there is a much more elegant solution.
• Fundamentals are important. In art you might say "nice black an white work, did you consider adding colour as well?" In programming the equivalent would be "nice work on coding every single case, did you consider using an array and a loop?" The difference is straight black and white is a valid art choice. Not using arrays and loops is not a valid programming choice. The better answer is "stop everything and go read up on arrays and loops".
• Sometimes the question has no answer. Programming example "how do I change static variables individually in each instance?" An equivalent art question is "what colour is a triangle?" If questions display this sort of fundamental misunderstanding, going back to the learn section is the best answer.
• Sometimes code smells. While the immediate problem is easy to fix, there are underlying structural problems that will keep biting. It's better to point these out, and suggest a rewrite from scratch, instead of fixing one bug at a time on a fundamentally broken system.

Couple of other principles to keep in mind. You are asking for free support from random strangers. Take what you can get and consider yourself ahead of the game.

And finally, "those who can do, those who can't post instructions on the internet".

 

As someone who frequently stops people to ask why, I usually find that to be the single best way to actually solve people's problems. I tend to find a lot of beginners are trying to solve a problem, but not at the root, and trying to come up with a solution that makes Cthulhu look sane. People usually slam their head against the point where their problem manifests and don't know how to trace the problem to it's source.

This is partly a difference in culture. It's hard to outright say that art is bad, but it's easy to say that code is terrible when it doesn't solve the problem, or even the right problem, or even solves the problem with the wrong methods.

 

Ah I see. You do it to help them think critically? I could see this being effective in person but like Shneider said, on the internet and in text, things can be taken a completely different way.

I've never seen him apart from his initial post. He was pulling examples from my Post to support his argument so I went and pulled examples from his to support mine. That's all.

 

What he quoted could very easily be described as a summary of your original post. It mentioned the programming community and the problem you encountered with it. It satisfied my need for context. Worst case I could simply read the quoted post above.

What you quoted was essentially the insult without any of the context to give an idea as to why it was made. If we needed more context we were somewhat out of luck unless we went digging as you didn't provide a link either.

It may have been one thing if he were insulting a newcomer genuinely interested in trying to learn, but he merely insulted a thief trying to justify their wrongdoing. I doubt many would be offended by that despite the strong wording.

 

It's also not programmer related, which is supposed to be the point of this thread.

 

He left out major parts of my post as well in his reply. Pulling out only one line which sounds bad just by itself but completely left out the parts where I explained that this was simply my initial interpretation due to what i was presented on the internet and i even went as far as stating that I could be completely wrong and wanted to hear everyones opinion. In doing so he then used that one line out of context to imply that I was immature. It is the exact same thing.

 

I knew where the original was if I needed clarification. I would not have needed it though based on that single sentence. You state that it was your initial interpretation, but your later posts continue to indicate that you have yet to change your mind.

 

@Galactic_Muffin I note that you are new to this community. Hang around for a couple of months and you will get just as short as the rest of us when you type the same answer to the same question five times a week. Some days I simply link to the last time I answered the question.

Its easy to think there are problems in a community you haven't been involved in much. But in general most of us here have a decent amount of respect for the other members of the community. We genuinely want to help out. Most of us have a reasonable grasp of the subject matter. We have our community norms, and anyone that doesn't comply gets the message hammered home pretty quickly.

Sure we can be rough on newbies. But in general any newbie that sticks around will be better off for the roughness. We all made a lot of mistakes getting here, and pointing out those mistakes early can avoid a lot of struggles down the path. Newbies also create their own set of difficulties for the community, so its in our interest to make them not newbies as fast as possible.

 

I am out of this. Originally, I thought it'd be good to respond to the initial post which seemed to be a criticism directed at all programmers. Knowing there are many examples of fine human beings on these forums who also happen to be programmers I had some pretty major disagreement with the post.

But seeing how it has transitioned into an unfolding drama (yucky stuff I never cared for) yeah I am done here. My last thing on the subject is that I think it is a just a difference in perception in many cases and that yes there are plenty a-holes programmers and otherwise. It does not mean ALL programmers need an attitude adjustment.

 

I apologize if that was your interpretation. I did not mean to give off that interpretation.
I think this is an excellent example of what Ony was saying earlier. Interpretations can easily be skewed on the internet.

But when an insult is a blatant insult, there really is nothing to be misunderstood. And I have seen plenty of that in question and answer posts as well.
All I was asking if you guys feel that is a common problem in programming related question and answer posts too, if not then I have only just seen the minority, which is good.

Do you agree or disagree?

Im glad to hear that, thanks for giving me your perspective

 

We can't really give a good answer because it entirely depends on the location. Our community is far better than most I've encountered. Our moderators may seem a bit over tolerant at times but keep in mind that the forum account is really your main account. Losing it is a serious thing.

Stack Overflow is a good place if you're willing to put forth the effort to learn, including doing some research and at least trying to solve it yourself. They expect you to not ask duplicate questions unless the answers from others are simply insufficient. The newcomers we assist on a regular basis here wouldn't really be tolerated by them.

 

But the questions haven't been asked for every programming language, and it can be really frustrating to search for answers to problems in newer languages. I'll often find my exact question after googling it, but only because Google decided to remove one keyword - the language name. It takes a little while to train Google to give you relevant answers, but it's at the point where I can look for general C# stuff and the first page is all Unity answers

Then if I search for a Go or Rust answer, I get results which aren't even programming.

 

So I guess to get back to the original topic, then, I do not think the issue of rudeness is any more prevalent in programming than it is anywhere else on the Internet. And the Unity forums, in particular, have a much better community than most.

Off topic again, on the difficulty of Google searches, when Mecanim was causing a seam to appear in my mesh, no matter how much I searched for variants of "Unity face tearing issue" all I could find were news articles about this:

 

There is a reason why Galactic_Muffin has dedicated the rest of his thread to discussing me. My words have hit a sore spot in his personality thus he feels the need to defend his integrity by trying to oust any confidence others may have in what I say or the comment I made about him.

To confirm this look at where the attention has been focused. It has been focused around the person that he perceives has told him off and told him off in a way that hit home and exposed him as being immature.

Notice also the wording of each post made by Galactic_Muffin after my comment which, when you know what to look for, show signs of annoyance and anger at me that I should dare say what I said.

 

Yea, that seems to be the general consensus. I have frequently used stack overflow for already answered questions and I can recall several times where I really wanted to PM the guy who answered the question and give him what for lol
Glad here I don't have to be as afraid of asking a question if the time comes.

This scenario couldn't be more true. XD

 

In before lock-down.

 

I do feel the need to point out that there are two sites - Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange. You may want to investigate the other one. I'll link a quick comparison someone made (based on the site FAQs). They also give an additional link that discusses it further near the bottom of the answer.

Essentially Stack Overflow is for solving problems whereas Stack Exchange is more about subjective discussions.

http://meta.stackexchange.com/quest...stack-overflow-and-programmers-se/68386#68386

 

You see the same basic separation here, between answers and forums.

The SO community does seem to be stricter on moderation and what is allowed in. I seldom find a question there that does not have a valid answer. UA is not so reliable, its reasonably common to come across top google results with no answer. Part of this is due to the general willingness to answer every question that comes up, rather then harsh moderation.

 

I've generally gotten that impression as well. I wasn't really aware of the state of UA though as I have almost completely ignored that part of the site in the past. I tend to prefer using forums over other alternatives.

 

Most people are not good teachers. Can you give directions to a tourist in your home town? It's hard pitching an answer to someone who doesn't know all the stuff that you know (such as major landmarks, subway stations, etc). Most people don't even realize that the questioner cannot possibly understand their answer because it requires knowledge that they don't have.

 

I want to defend the 'why'ers" really quick. A lot of times a question indicates that the user is attempting a solution or design that will cause HUGE problems down the road. Asking why a user wants to attempt something can give just enough context to steer them in the right direction. Otherwise, answering the question "How do I copy paste a chunk of code into all scripts in a folder?" directly will lead to an overall worse experience for the user.

 

yeah but why?