The short answer is the people you interacted with are assholes. The stereotype of IT people is that they don’t know how to play with others. Just because it is a Stereotype doesn’t mean it is not earned.

please do not delete your question. it could easily help someone else who has the same issue. by deleting it, you are throwing away the work of the person who took the time to answer it.

Why do you think they went into a profession where they communicate primarily with a machine?

Yeah, it's common, especially in programming. It's true that searching on Google usually solves the problem, but the biggest issue is that it's hard to know the exact word you need to use. They know the word so it's trivial for them, but that's not the case with others, and they're proud that they're out of touch with people.

Because there is a huge demographic of nerds that are actually chuds and learned absolutely nothing from being bullied and/or being a beginner when they were younger.

I bet you can picture the demographic that they overlap with, but I'ma try not to explicitly make this political.

Unfortunately there's a lot of pretentious and impatient assholes in this field.

That being said, IRL, I've had coworkers that are assholes, and I've had coworkers that have been the most amazing people. Just depends on who's on your team and who you have to interact with.

…what is is to be a woman in STEM. and why a lot of women leave and why it’s a sausage party. And also why women online often disguise themselves even in games.

That being said I suggest this when some rando online is trying to pressure you: when a person is so fragile to be easily annoyed by your existence: exist harder. They are the fool for giving you such power. Lean into it. Ask more questions. Watch them stir in their seat overreacting.

Cuz one thing I’ve learned is when you are that brave: there are twice as many newbies hiding around you thinking you’re awesome for asking all the hard questions.

Don’t delete because of some elitist assholes. Leave it up for the other newbies. Get more newbies up in their business.

I run into people like that at work and what I've discovered is they have no idea they're being rude. Some people in technology are genuinely that out of touch.

I just created an account to tell you, if you would like, I would be super happy to either answer that question you had, or if I don't know the answer show you how I research problems related to programming or archotecture or algo or whatever needs done to finish a project. I've been in IT for 20 years now. What you experienced is the very thing I've dedicated my career to correcting.

Fuck rude gatekeeping assholes, knowledge is for everyone.

It's because they're stupid and mask their flaws by being rude so you don't question their authority or intelligence.

Some of them are probably insecure about their own limitations and find pleasure in mocking someone who knows a little less than they do. On the other hand there may also be, among the crowd, those who genuinely found your mistake to be an unusually funny one.

Without seeing the entirety of the interaction, it's hard to be sure.

Some people are assholes, and because nobody wants to interact with assholes, they usually end up congregating on whatever forum doesn't ban them. Moderation is hard and ban evasion is often easy, so there end up being a lot of places like that.

The other side is that people in general ask a lot of bad questions, and a forum flooded with bad questions becomes useless because people who could answer good questions either get tired of it and leave, or spend so much time on the bad questions they don't have time for the good ones. People get frustrated when they think that's happening to a forum they enjoy, and programmers are famously better at communicating with machines than with people.

Here's are some tips to ask good questions about programming:

• First, try to find the answer without asking other people. This is especially important when it comes to programming because the whole job is problem-solving. That means figuring out how a search result, LLM output, or published documentation relates to whatever it is you're trying to do.
• Once you're sure you need help from other people, clearly articulate what it is you want to happen, what you tried in order to achieve it, and what actually happened. Use more detail than you think you need here, especially regarding your expectations. Sometimes the mere act of composing a question this way leads you to the answer, which is effective enough there's a popular technique of explaining problems to inanimate objects.
• Include the troubleshooting steps you tried from the first step above in your question. By typing it out, you may discover an error or omission in your process, but you also communicate to other people that you're not just being lazy, wasting their time, and reducing the signal to noise ratio of their forum.

Report the rude assholes. Genuinely not knowing something while genuinely asking for knowledge should never be shat on.

Whilst dealing with this kind of asshole in a work environment is a lot more complex, online they’re like dogs barking behind a wall - only doing it because they're aggressive simpletons and isolated from any problems from doing it - and just as unworthy of consideration or attention as one.

They really only have any impact on you when you give them more importance than they deserve.

Also keep in mind that these people are at the lower end of expertise and professionalism: top experts don't waste time with talking shit like that, they'll just either teach you or (most likely) ignore you because they think that stuff is too basic and not worth their time, and professionals are used to being professional and shit-talking ain't being professional - even in expertise terms these people are unimportant.

Frankly, this has been quite a significant barrier to my Linux adoption previously. Its really unfortunate that people are like this. I wish there were set tags or communities for noob problems so people could post questions safely. Anyone who doesn't want to engage with noobs can then stay away.

Do I know why that happened to you? No, just guessing.

What I do know though: if it was like some replies here suggest, that it’s all due to IT folks not playing well with others, then forums like stack overflow wouldn’t exist.

What I also know: I’ve been to a lot of forums, not all IT related, and I met quite a few people online who just love to be rude, regardless of the topic.

So if I had to guess why, I’d say because they are assholes, not because it was an IT forum.

I'm very sorry this happened to you. Please don't let some assholes discourage you. It's a great profession, and can be a lot of fun.

Some people are just dick. There might be a bigger crossover between programmers and socially inadequate people, but thankfully it's not a complete overlap (I hope).

Hopefully you'll find saner people somewhere else. It's fine being snarky with people you know and know can handle it, but doing so with stranger online really looks bad moist of the time.

Did you practice due diligence of RTFM (reading the fucking manual) & researching the problem earnestly before asking a question that requests people to commit their time to answer it (ie, were you considerate), and did you show the effort you had put into answering the question yourself & what insights you gained before getting stuck? That's usually it. No one appreciates their time wasted by poor effort.

I used to work with a programmer who would schedule meetings with IT subject matter experts of systems we were working on integrating. Instead of doing the research in advance & coming prepared with meaningful questions, he'd waste their time (and mine!) with questions he could have answered by reading public documentation. It was infuriating.

Every industry is like that, but with programming, you’re usually asking online, and people tend to be much bigger assholes online. Try not to let them bother you. Eventually you’ll be better than them, because those people tend to not be that good at what they do anyway.

Being in the industry, I don't think they are. Forums attract chronically online and miserable people who are not there for beginners but for their own motives.

The Internet has a tendency to amplify these bad behaviors.

It's been said that the fastest way to get an answer to your programming question is to get someone to give you the wrong answer. Everyone jumps to correct that person much faster than they want to just answer a question.

To some degree, you have to expect people to be assholes, and you have to navigate around that. It does really suck though.

If you asked the question properly and they still gave you more grief than help, then it's their fault for sure.

Without knowing the context - that's key both questions, the one you asked then and the one you're asking now - we can't be sure what happened. And I'm not going to jump to conclusions about how much context you started with in your actual question because that is no help to you.

I say point us to the question -- and accept we're going to answer honestly.

I dont know why some people are assholes. You asked a beginner level question on a forum that allows, I'm assuming, beginners to ask questions. I hope this never happens to you again. Some of us enjoy working with sincere, curious beginners.

There are ways to talk to these condescending sarcastic assholes. But fuck them. I sorry they were hurtful and I hope you find people who want to go with you on your journey with you.

I'm an it professional and I am sad what happened to you.

However, without knowing details I could not pass judgement on what went wrong. Yes, people (not only in it!) are elitist assholes oftentimes but maybe something very basic was off (which you might not have even known, missing experience) and so on and so forth.

Being in the field for decades I can say that there's nothing I have not seen.

Do not lose hope and carry on if you're interested.

There are shit people everywhere. Focus on the good people and positive spaces.

RTFM

_{(but seriously, best attempt is to post wrong code and claim it's the best solution for a problem - you will be instantly corrected)}

A large majority of programmers seem to think sharing knowledge means they will lose value so they are super stingy with it. "Back in my days" you'd find people literally using their shoulders to block anyone's view of their code

99% of those are terrible programmers that do not really understand what they are doing.

It’s funny, right? These dudes will simultaneously decry new programmers relying on AI to teach them but then will also turn around and mock and troll new users like duh… I’d talk to the ai too!

I think there’s a few different things worth addressing here, so please bear with me since this might be a long reply.

What you experienced here is, unfortunately, very common for anyone getting into tech. A lot of us can recall the first time reaching out somewhere for help and receiving a mixture of belittlement and vague answers as a response. I’d argue it’s probably one of the biggest issues we have in this space.

If I had to guess why tech forums are so vitriolic to newcomers, I’d say a lot of us simply forgot what it was like to be inexperienced. They forgot how daunting it is to want to learn, to run headfirst into a bunch of errors you barely understand, and then try navigating a sea of concepts and terminology that practically requires a dictionary of its own.

While the forums rarely get better (unfortunately), never let those people drive you away. It’s incredibly overwhelming at first, and there’s a lot of us who are long overdue for a slice of humble pie, but someday things will start to click and the things you want to do will start to come to life.

It’s late, I’m rambling, but you’ll your footing. When you do I hope you get the satisfaction of telling one of those assholes on the forums to shove it while giving another newcomer the welcome they need

In short, this is a social faux pas that you didn't know about, because you're new to asking questions online.

And as you can see from the existence of that wikihow page: it's a common problem and you are not the first or the last to run into this. Sorry.

https://www.wikihow.com/Ask-a-Question-on-the-Internet-and-Get-It-Answered

Learn the culture of the forum. Every community on the internet has its own style and set of rules (both written and unwritten). Spend some time reading through other posts before making your own. This will help you learn the etiquette for that specific forum. Knowing how to ask your question in a way that fits in with that culture can really help you get the answers you need.

Make your title a succinct version of your question.

Go into detail in the body of the message. After writing the title, explain the details in the body. List specific problems and what you have tried so far.

Describing what you have tried so far, is extremely important.

Writing it out can make you go through the thinking steps necessary and you will answer your own question in the process of asking it. That's so common it's called "rubber ducking". Everyone does it. But if you don't do the writing, people can be cross because you're asking a question you didn't need to ask.

Keep an open mind. There's a chance that you won't like the answer you receive. There's also a chance that the answer that you don't like is the only available option. Make sure to keep an open mind about your responses, and try to avoid getting defensive.

Don't give up. If you don't receive any responses, or the responses are not satisfactory, take some time to examine your question. Was it specific enough? Did you ask too many questions? Was the answer easily obtained through a web search? Is the question even answerable? Rework your question and ask it again, either in the same place or a new one. Never believe that you are entitled to an answer. Responders volunteer their time to help out other users. No one owes you an answer, so you should avoid acting like they do.

There are different kinds of communities that have different levels of professionalism and question asking culture. You picked one at random at the wrong level.

I promise you not every community online is like that. Try a different one.

---

And also, you didn't do your research for this question either. Or you could have found the wikihow page. 😜

Still?? The elitist culture threw me off programming over twenty years ago. I really thought and hoped it had changed

Which forum lol?

Some experienced programmers forget how difficult computers and programming can be for beginners. It's obvious for us to look at the error and resolve it, but for most people it's pretty arcane. Relevant XKCD

Unfortunately, I think this is also a right of passage of some sorts. If you want to continue programming you will encounter a problem that you can't ask or find the answer on the internet and you will have to work through it yourself. I've had problems I've been stuck in for weeks or months. At least for me, it's always been such a high when I finally solve these. :)

people suck online because there's zero physical consequences to being rude. this isn't a problem on forums like the one you visited, but all of them tbh

Nothing makes some sad sacks feel better about themselves than making fun of someone for not knowing what they have learned. Just know they have been pants on their heads stupid about something and had to ask for help. Count on it.

Producers too, like music producers I mean. Though I can only speak to that field personally, it might be a similar situation, so I'll share.

Well actually, I mean I guess it's two things- one is that a male-dominated field with a lot of egos involved can pretty easily develop in a snooty direction. STEM careers are famous for that as well. It blows.

The second thing, the thing I was initially going to mention is that at least in the case of producing, there is an epic shitton of information you need to learn to do it well/properly, for starters. Even to just make your first piece, you need to actually STUDY it. That attracts two different archetypes, and the one that sucks is the overwhelming majority. :(

So, as you can probably imagine it's super easy to find courses/tutorials online to learn stuff; you can find the whole field plus music theory on YouTube for free. The problem is that a lot of beginners don't bother to do that, and/or don't think they'll need to. Unfortunately, it's these lazy fucking casuals that saturate all our "ask someone who knows" spaces with asinine, uniformed nonsense questions.

So you see, by the time you see a question from a legitimate learner, sometimes even a peer, you're so annoyed by the other sort that you can't sort them.

That's not fair to the legitimate learners, of course (and as someone who is not yet a full-on expert, I've been on the wrong end of this myself), but thats the sad state of things.

"Growing a thicker skin", or so I'm told, is the only solution. :(

I assume the motivation for a lot of people to go online and answer people's technical questions is to puff up their ego

It's a certain kind of people. In a word, they are focused.

Within the circle of their focus they are gentle, deep, subtle and wise. Without, clumsy, crude and violent.

The realm of good manners is in that outside part.

IRC is still pretty popular with programmers and in my experience people are helpful on the various tech channels (on libera.chat at least)

I have trained 6 people to fill my shoes in my role. 1 gave up. 1 got fired. 1 was never really a programmer and that resulted in an argument with management about the role actually needed (they call it tier 2 support but you need to be a competent programmer to debug the issues). 2 of the others took other jobs for much more pay. The last guy is still here and he's good I guess...

But I'm tired man... Tired of explaining the same things over again. It's not the new guy's fault but that doesn't change the fact that I've grown jaded. I tend to realize I being a jerk, apologize and tone it down. Doesn't change the fact that my gut response is jerkish.

Some people are like that, dunno why but programming has way more. It's a mindset of "How could you possibly not know [insert technojargon]."

I don't have any answer but I feel your pain. Years ago I wanted to learn C++ for Arduino and asking questions always seemed to have answers that talked down to me and made me feel stupid for asking.

I even tried proving that I made an effort to learn before asking. That didn't work either. People were still rude.

I gave up.

Years later I got into into Linux and started learning POSIX scripting and self-hosting. I again tried asking questions but still received mostly rude answers but this time there were people in the mix of replies that did try to help. It was slightly better.

I tried showing off a script I was proud of but I did something wrong and people rudely let me know about my mistake. They took no effort to educate me on why it was wrong. I asked for a reason to understand what I did wrong but was left with silence.

I didn't give up this time but I stopped asking for help and I'm still afraid to show off my projects.

It's the exact same bullshit I experienced in the trades. I quit my apprenticeship and left the trades because people refused to understand that someone else with less experience won't instinctively know all the basics. Starting something new is overwhelming and it's hard to retain all that information the first time learning it all.

I feel like rudeness towards beginners is one of the biggest hypocrisies when so much of progress is built on sharing knowledge.

One lesson I learned from a this is that I either take the time to answer a question fully or don't. I can at least feel good about the few times I spent answering a question. The people that asked the question were always appreciative of the time and effort I took to help them understand what they wanted to know.

This is why I do actually use AI - teach and troubleshoot. Infinite patience is something technicians do not possess. Rather the opposite. Claude will happily spend hours explaining things or asking me background questions, or letting me ask questions I would be afraid to ask otherwise. I hated having to spend an hour or two simply researching for the QUESTION I wanted to ask so that people wouldn't accuse me of being an idiot, because I used the wrong terminology or something. I still encounter this from other sysadmins at work, so I often ask Claude if my question makes sense or if there's chance for confusion. As a result I actually learn a lot more, a LOT faster, and get the rough touch so much less.

Because it took 10, 20 years for them to start to know their ass from a hole in the ground. So they take all the pain of their learning experience and lob it back at you whenever you remind them of themselves starting out.

They might also resent newbies for the much better learning materials available today and even the possibility for easy shortcuts (llms). Back then there was no substitute for sitting down and fiddling with it for hours or reading a some poorly-written book.

There is a high amount of god complex in many advanced programmers

Gamer culture I am assuming?

Btw they weren't ignoring you, they just didn't know the answer themselves and wanted to hide it.

The comments have people this post is talking about, yet they are too dense to realise it ahaha

It's weird, IRL and in some online venues, it seems like people are usually friendly and ready to helps newbies learn.

But then plenty of other online spaces seem to just invite elitism and negativity. The culture of 'rtm', 'lmgtfy' and 'marked as duplicate' doesn't encourage people to respect others.

StackExchange was the most discouraging place I ever asked a question as a beginner.

The two questions I ever asked were immediately downvoted to 0 before an answer was even given. And then the answer basically called out my errors without explaining how to fix them. The most helpful replies were people just giving me a full set of code that worked, but they never explained how it worked.

So I went back to lurking and hoping someone else has my question.

As you can see, Lemmy has quite a few of these people, too.

The ones who are rude are arrogant assholes. They are bad people doing bad things. I've been a programmer for over 40 years and I'm happy to answer questions, even if I've answered them a dozen times before and even if a quick Google search would give them the answer.

My only question is - would the issue be solved if you followed the manual properly?

Just an asshole. My experience is different. Know that you learned from others and stood on the shoulders of giants.

The whole "pay it forward" culture is a thing. So next time, ignore that fucker and teach new people.

Being good at programming does not correlate with good people skills or good teaching skills. As you have noticed asking questions on the Internet attracts assholes that want to flex their "intellectual superiority" at others.

Learning programming is hard. Assholes making beginners afraid to ask questions makes it even harder. But I promise you that once you get decent at it, it goes from frustrating to rewarding.

I'm sorry this happened to you. Just know that there are assholes everywhere, and they often tend to be the most vocal, especially when they can hide behind anonymity. Try not to let them discourage you.

Often times people with jobs that don’t involve a lot of human interaction have those jobs for a reason. They maybe don’t enjoy it or aren’t good at it. There’s also the gatekeeping aspect and the bootstraps (no pun intended) way of thinking. I had to do it this way and it was hard for me so you have to do it like that too. Also, lots of people losing jobs, the industry can be more competitive now. Good luck!

I believe they feel they have power and are superior to you because they have more knowledge. And you know how people tend to act in that circumstances.

Sorry you had this experience. Not all of us are like that though. I just thought of my own experience and I usually try to find an answer with a web search instead of asking in a forum. Most of the time someone else already had the problem and was brave enough to ask. This is especially true for beginner problems. As rough as some of those people can be, there already is a tutorial for almost anything imaginable. And it goes both ways. Don't ask for stuff that can easily be found on the web. (I'm not implying you did, this is just a general tip)

Engineers often have poor self-esteem. You can learn to program. Anyone can. It just takes work and persistence. Algebra is mandatory. Geometry helps, especially if you're doing graphics. Calculus will be very useful, but not necessary for most application level work. Begin with math. The rest is syntax and rules of thumb.

Source?

Because many people not bother to do even the most basic research before asking.

Imagine like the electricians forum is filled with guys who ask where should they shove the light bulb – in the mouth or in the ass, and why it doesn't emit light in neither of those places.

Ah, you ran into neckbeards. This is a typical interaction with them. They are afraid because they are finally in a position of power digitally whereas in real life, nobody cares about them. Honestly, ask LLMs https://chat.mistral.ai/or something else.

I have Linux but am a casual user and my experience with Linux users has been nothing short of terrible. Before LLMs, I had to either find the answer on some *overflow website, the ubuntu forums, or just give up and move on. Now, LLMs help me out more than humans ever did. LLMs don't tell you you're stupid, they don't ridicule your question, they don't ridicule you. Of course they can be dangerous if they give you bad commands, but so can humans.

If you must talk to humans online to get help, what I've seen work is to tell them they are wrong and that your solution works 100%. Some neckbeard will show up, call you stupid, and give the solution. And if that doesn't work, just ridicule them and say it didn't work, which means your solution is the right one. It'll make them try to prove you wrong even harder 🤷