The programming community needs an attitude adjustment.

Where does experts-exchange (pay to get answer) fit in?

 

I don't know anyone who has ever used them. Myself included.

 

If you pay me, I'll tell you who's used them.

--Eric

 

I dont even bother looking at the coding section anymore... same questions constantly over-asked, under described, by people who obviously havnt taken any time to RTFM.

while im on the under-described rant, if you post to showcase, include screenshots or video, and a description of the game.

The number of posts that say, check out my game I made in [insert time here] + [link].. ug.

 

People have no idea how easy it is now, back in the day you flipped through your paper copy of K&R or read man pages. Google, pffft, rudeness for people doing your homework for free is a small price to pay.

Did I say this in a laughing light hearted manner, or disgustedly with a sneer on my face, you'll never know!

 

lol Thats why you guys need noob coders like me to help balance out the ego levels that some people put out:

Check out my awful Bug game I made in [34 months] + [http://i.imgur.com/FzYg2qa.png].
Dont even get me started on the pristine perfectness of the code. Over 100 public variables and nested if/else statements all in one script. Beautiful.

 

@Galactic_Muffin - Doesn't really matter which specialization you look at, there is always people with a really horrible attitude. The same goes for artists and designers... there is no statistics to prove who is worse so a discussion like that is honestly pointless but I would personally bet that it would turn out to be really even.

There can also be many reasons to why a discussion derails... maybe communication error? English isn't the primary language for many people (me included) and it can even happen that they sound offensive simply because they don't know the appropriate word... and others that are impossible to understand I've had many fun discussions with colleagues about words, gestures and behavior that is appropriate / inappropriate in different countries... that just make the whole thing worse xD
Other people might just have a grumpy moment or you might be the 300th person of the day that asked the same question without using the search function first...of course insisting that you did

Can go on but nah... makes me remember on to many funny situations xD

 

I started on UA, but tend to be spending more time here now. UA was great for building your debugging skills, or for getting unique problems to practice your coding skills on. Learning what works, and what doesn't, and generally learning the engine. Most of its value to me came from answering other peoples questions, I only ended up asking four of my own.

For the higher level discussion I'm now on the forums. Thanks to UA I can code anything I feel like making. The forums seem a better place for discussing what and why I should be coding it, instead of how.

 

Keep in mind that we rude programmers generally spend 8-16 hours a day "talking" to machines. We tell them what to do in the most concise and straightforward manner. They tell us what they are thinking with ambiguous bullcrap like "Object reference not set to an instance of a value". We then proceed to swear at the machine while typing until we can come to some sort of agreement.

We've also spent a considerable amount of time learning our craft, and those of us who have learned it over the period of 30 years didn't have things like forums to ask stupid questions like "Why does the code above fail?" When the error message clearly states what's wrong and what line. We had to rely on things like books, ingenuity, trial, and many many errors.

People at work think I'm a jerk sometimes. I'm cool with that. If people can't take the time to do a google search, or step through their code, why should I bother being nice? Should I step through others code because they can't be bothered? I need to act like a jerk or the number of stupid questions I get go through the roof. If my title was "Principal stupid question answerer" then I wouldn't mind, but my title is "Principal Software Development Specialist", and I do in fact have software to develop.

Artists are a different breed. The beauty of what you produce is the product. You expect everyone to gush over how beautiful it is. It's art, its meant to be admired. No one (but me) will ever give a crap about the beauty of my code. Best case scenario is that I deploy something and people don't complain about having to click too many times. Worst case, I put over a bug and everyone thinks my last month of work is crap.

I don't need an attitude adjustment. I'm an irritable introvert who is usually thinking about some sort of algorithm even if it looks like I'm staring at my computer, chewing on my fingers. Any question is probably interrupting my thought process, which I was most likely enjoying immensely.

And for some levity, this is pretty close to the reality we deal with on a daily basis:

 

Totally nailed it.

 

@delinx32 - That video is perfect. Thanks for sharing.

 

I've been in trouble a bit recently for being that kind of expert. Apparently "physics" is not an appropriate reason to reject the team vision.

 

I worked for close to seven years in studios as a game artist. When the programmers would tell me something couldn't be done the way I thought it should be, I'd say, "You're a freaking programmer. Just make it work." I was pretty demanding. It didn't make sense to me why they couldn't make things work the way they obviously should. And sometimes we'd have little fights about it. And sometimes they'd win and sometimes I would win. We'd always come to some sort of compromise, though, and ultimately the games were better for it.

Later, when I left the corporate game world and started out on my own, I realized I needed a programmer, but back then (2000-2001) there weren't so many of them working as indies (hardly any) so it was hard to find them. I decided to do it myself, and I did. I learned how to program. I've been doing it ever since. And from that very first project I programmed myself, to this day, I laugh at my old insistent artistic self and her (very) demanding ways. I was wrong. And now I know. The artist side of me says, "hey, we need this in the game" and the programmer side of me says, "yeah, good luck with that."

Programmers get to play god, but we still have to follow the rules of the universe we reside in.

 

I have not read what it is here... bu if you never asked on #bash you know nothing about being rude...

Still there is a reason when you ask things you can know if you learn to use the language like a pro .... so the most polite answer will be RTFM!!! or at less "I can search google and get an answer in the first results, so you can".

 

And to some English is their 4th, but they still can't even communicate very well in their native language. Allegedly.

 

Yeah, some answers just plain aren't nice to hear, and moreso when devoid of social cues. "You should work on your understanding of pointers" could be said with the best of intentions and warmest of hearts and yet be read as a snyde, belittling, superior-sounding nitpick.

On top of that that our answers are often telling people how to figure stuff out themselves, which to a newcomer doesn't seem helpful at all. I mean, clearly that guys knows exactly what's wrong with my code, but instead of just telling me he's dug up a link to some some old cryptic document and said to look at the section on pointers. What the heck? I wanted to know what's wrong with a line of code, not get given study homework!

To the experienced guy sending the link that seems like absolutely the right thing to do: the problem exists because the newbie doesn't understand pointers, and this will help him understand pointers, be a better programmer as a result, and never have that problem again. The newbie, on the other hand, just sees that the experienced guy chose to do something that's keeping the answer to an immediate problem tantalizingly out of reach.

 

It has a lot to do with perspective. I'm about as new and bad at programming as you can get and people have been unbelievably helpful so far, not only here but in every place I've asked questions I have received unsolicited offers for help and detailed answers to stupid questions.

The same goes for when I google my questions and find answers to other's.

My work rated internet communities are much more cutthroat, newbie unfriendly and people generally don't go out of their way explaining things to and helping newcomers the way programmers and especially game developers do.

From my point of view, you guys are awesome, if people answer rudely / briefly they are still doing a free, big service to the asker that they shouldn't take for granted.

 

There is no defense for being rude or violent. When your reaction at a question is being rude, then you should think twice if you really want to answer that question at all.

Just try to talk in the same way to your beloved and friends as you do in the internet at a board. And when you find yourself in a very lonely life after that, then you did it wrong.