Have I become intolerant of new forum members?

I have been, on and off, a user of these forums since 2008. I have come into contact with many intelligent helpful people who have enabled me to progress in my hobby/pastime/part time job as a vb programmer.

I have tried to present my ideas and solutions to problems in code and generally try to ask for suggestions and help. I have also tried to give, what I can, back ( I'm still learning so I cannot really be as proliferous as others here).

It appears to me, that recently, all we see is new members in their first posts begging for people to write complex solutions to ideas that appear to be way beyond their understanding. I dont think I was like this (I must check my posts :) ). Or have I just become intolerant of those who are just starting out?

There have always been people like that. I'm not very active on the forums right now, so I don't know if this has increased recently, but every tech forum has people who come and just ask "c0d plz!".

If you search ChitChat, you'll find a lot of posts from people making fun of newbies like that.

Oh, it gets worse as the end of quarters & semesters roll around too, as everyone suddenly wakes up, realizes that programming isn't easy after all and tries to cram it all into a week. It comes and goes in cycles.

-tg

I just find it annoying when the user is from an English reading/writing background and they don't write properly (bad grammar, spelling, etc) in their posts.

Heh. Like using "to" as "the universal preposition."

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I'm working right now. I'll get reply in detail when I get home to work.

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Er, do you live at work or what?

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Well an egg is quite different to a chicken.

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Hmm, I'll bet it is.

Some people write like the droogs in A Clockwork Orange spoke.

NightWalker83,
I take it that was a gentle hint in my direction. After reading my initial post, I have noticed many grammatical,spelling and syntactic errors. I have no excuses, just laziness on my part for not reading and correcting it before posting. I have made comment in the past about poor grammar in forum posts. This just leads to replies stating that there are many non native English speaking/writing people on the internet and I cannot expect good spelling or sentence construction.
I will be the first to admit that I am by no means perfect in this department. People in glass houses should not throw stones sort of thing.

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Originally Posted by 2ndmessiah

NightWalker83,
I take it that was a gentle hint in my direction. After reading my initial post, I have noticed many grammatical,spelling and syntactic errors. I have no excuses, just laziness on my part for not reading and correcting it before posting. I have made comment in the past about poor grammar in forum posts. This just leads to replies stating that there are many non native English speaking/writing people on the internet and I cannot expect good spelling or sentence construction.
I will be the first to admit that I am by no means perfect in this department. People in glass houses should not throw stones sort of thing.

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I'm not having a go at the people whom have English as their second/third language but those whose mother tongue is English. Nor do I mean occasional spelling mistakes posts written such as "Hi, Plese hep mi wit my program cuz I can't figure out wot is wrong". Post like that annoy me.

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Originally Posted by dilettante

Heh. Like using "to" as "the universal preposition."

Er, do you live at work or what?


Hmm, I'll bet it is.

Some people write like the droogs in A Clockwork Orange spoke.

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How ghastly.

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I'm not having a go at the people whom have English as their second/third language

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That should be "who have english...". Whom applies when it's describing the object of the sentence rather than the subject. You could have said "for whom Engilsh is a first language" of "who have English as a first language" Sorry, that one was just too good to pass up given the context:p

I've got to admit to being a bit of a grammer nazi which is a really bad position for me to take because over the last few years I've found stink loads of errors creeping in to my own posts. It seems to be caused by a combination of increasingly clumsy fingers and a decreasing inclination to proof read everything before I post it. In fact I've developed a bizarre habit of proof reading it [I]after[I] I've posted it and then editing it 18 times to correct all the errors. I have no idea why I do that. I'm willing to bet there'll be a "Last Edited" message on this post by the time you read it. In fact, no there won't. I'm going to post it and be damned. In fact I just spotted that I've miss-spelled English in the previous paragraph... and I'm going to leave it there. The irony of miss-spelling English while correcting someone's English who was talking about correcting people's English is truly delicious.

[quote]Some people write like the droogs in A Clockwork Orange spoke[quote]You mean all horror show like. I viddy that, my brother.

Back on the original topic: Yeah, there'll always be those posts and they definitely ebb and flow with the academic year. I think there's a worse habit, though, which is those of us who've forgotton what it's like to be a beginner and get needlessly cruel. Sometimes a beginners question will be vague and poorly phased because they simply don' have enough knowledge to know what the right question is. At times like that I often see links to "Let Me Google That For You"; or deliberate missunderstandings followed by berating them with a "but that's not what you asked"; or a straight link to MSDN when what the poster really needs is a tutorial. I think that sort of thing is really just bullying and, I'm rather ashamed to admit, I've probably done it myself. Don't get me wrong, I want to know that the poster's putting in some effort themselves but a freindly word here and there and a bit of guidance doesn't cost much.

Oh God. Reading that back I really regret my decision not to edit it. Must... correct... tags... Must... Not... appear... weak... before... peers...:eek2:

Well, I always get confused when to use whom and when not to.

Hmmm.... "y'all" was singular.... "all y'alls" is the plural... as in "ok, Dutch, y'all get on up in there 'n' flush him out. Rest all y'all go wif' Buford and head on 'round back."

-tg

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Originally Posted by Nightwalker83

Well, I always get confused when to use whom and when not to.

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I only ever use "whom" on two occasions: "To whom are you talking to?" and "For whom the bells toll, it tolls for thee." I'm not sure I've ever found any other occasion when the use of "whom" is appropriate.

-tg

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Originally Posted by techgnome

"To whom are you talking to?"

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Why two 'to's?

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I only ever use "whom" on two occasions: "To whom are you talking to?" and "For whom the bells toll, it tolls for thee." I'm not sure I've ever found any other occasion when the use of "whom" is appropriate.

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The rule is that who is the subject and whom is the object. So if the "who" is being acted upon in the sentence then it's whom. If the "who" is doing the acting then it's who. If you look at the two example you gave, the "who" is being acted upon in both cases. In the first the "who" is being spoken to and in the second the bell is tolling for the "who". So Whom is correct in both those examples. Had you phrased the examples such that the "who" was doing the acting, e.g. "Who is talking to you?" of "Who Tolls the bell?" then it's the subject so who becomes correct rather than whom.

Interestingly you phrased both as passive sentences (where the object appears before the subject). That's a bit distracting but doesn't change the rules. Had you phrased them as active sentences they would still have been whom: "You're talking to whom?" and "The bell tolls for whom". This hold true because the "Who" is till the object; it is being acted upon. Equally, passive sentences where the "who" is the subject should still be who: "You are being talked to by who?" and "The bell is tolled by who?".

In all honesty, though, whom has pretty much dropped out of existence and it's only pretentious toss-pots like me who bother to try and understand it.

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Originally Posted by 2ndmessiah

I have been, on and off, a user of these forums since 2008. I have come into contact with many intelligent helpful people who have enabled me to progress in my hobby/pastime/part time job as a vb programmer.

I have tried to present my ideas and solutions to problems in code and generally try to ask for suggestions and help. I have also tried to give, what I can, back ( I'm still learning so I cannot really be as proliferous as others here).

It appears to me, that recently, all we see is new members in their first posts begging for people to write complex solutions to ideas that appear to be way beyond their understanding. I dont think I was like this (I must check my posts :) ). Or have I just become intolerant of those who are just starting out?

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Normally I don't reply to n00bs :)

You are all new members to those of us who have been on these forums for a very long time in various guises.......

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Originally Posted by 2ndmessiah

It appears to me, that recently, all we see is new members in their first posts begging for people to write complex solutions to ideas that appear to be way beyond their understanding.

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I wonder how many of these are low-ball rentalcoders who steal work from legitimate programmers and have extremely thin skills. Probably using this site as a free subcontracting service.

I have an idea for this game where you have a little square with a line coming out of it and when you hit the spacebar bullets come out. Then there's 4 destructible buildings in front of you. Meanwhile, about 30 aliens move from left to right, then decend, then they move from right to left until next thing you know they're on top of you!!!!

So far here's what I have:

Console.WriteLine("Hello World!")

Could someone help me fill in the blanks?

It seems to me that the easier access we get to more information, the less we are inclined to get off a arsez and look for it. I have no issue with new members, or even old members for that matter, not knowing something. There's plenty of things that I don't know. What burns me up more than anything else is when someone asks a question and I tell them what class to use and what methods and properties of that class to use, rather than taking 30 seconds to type those names into a search engine and trying to find something for themselves, they don't even make the tiniest effort and just post back "Can you provide an example of that please". They aren't even using the word "example" correctly either because what they actually mean is "Can you please write my code for me".

I'm also a bit sick of the people who claim to learn best by example. Everyone learns from examples but that's only part of the learning process. The best way to learn is to do and that applies to anyone and everyone. Those who claim that examples are the only way they can learn are just plain lazy. It's laziness that I am intolerant of. On the occasions that lazy gets coupled with stupid... well, let's just say that my Ignore list in not completely empty. Mostly it's just lazy though. Not necessarily malicious lazy but the sort of lazy where if the chances of getting the correct result are not guaranteed to be 100% then the assumption is that no attempt should be made. That they try is all I ask. If they fail then I'm more than happy to help them fix it but trying and failing is all part of the learning process.

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Originally Posted by jmcilhinney

On the occasions that lazy gets coupled with stupid... well, let's just say that my Ignore list in not completely empty.

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So that's why you never reply to me. :cry:

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Originally Posted by penagate

So that's why you never reply to me. :cry:

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I don't, but that's not the reason. ;)

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I would ask very noobish questions, not know a thing about what somebody had posted, but I looked it up and understood it. I simply can't understand how people say "MSDN's library is to confusing." I would not be where I am with out MSDN's library along with y'all help. I've honestly gone from 0 programming experience to knowing a decent amount since Mar. 11th of last year.

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I concur. This my concurring face. It's a lot like my constipated face but a little less squinty.

I tell a lot of people to read the documentation and some of them counter with the excuse that MSDN is too confusing for beginners. Um, I was a beginner at the beginning too and I've been using MSDN as my primary resource since then. I'm not saying that you'll always find what you need at MSDN and I accept that you won't always understand what you find but, once again, the fact that you might fail is not a valid reason not to try. Even on the occasions that you don't understand what you find, the fact that you have read what's there means that it's in your head and may contribute to a light bulb moment later on. I lost count years ago of the number of times where information I read at MSDN wasn't useful at the time but was later. Again, it's just laziness and, I think, indicative of the current generation. Why make an effort without a guaranteed outcome when they can just sit on their butt and let someone else do it for them? Effort is not currently in vogue unfortunately.

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What burns me up more than anything else is when someone asks a question and I tell them what class to use and what methods and properties of that class to use, rather than taking 30 seconds to type those names into a search engine and trying to find something for themselves, they don't even make the tiniest effort and just post back

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Yeah, I think you usually get it about right (though possibly a little terse at times ;)). If what they need is syntax you point them at MSDN and if what they need is a bit of understanding of the topic you give them enough of an explanation to let them go away and have a fighting chance to research for themselves. What I have seen at times, though, is a an inexperienced user clearly miss-understanding a topic to the point where they don't even know what question to ask and someone just links them straight to an MSDN page that details the properties of some class. What they needed was a brief explanation and or linking to an MSDN "How To" page.

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They aren't even using the word "example" correctly either because what they actually mean is "Can you please write my code for me".

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I find the best response to that is to give them exactly what they asked for: an example. Related in principle to their problem but unrelated in context. That way they still have to work out how to apply it themselves.

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I've noticed the increased activity of the "c0d plx

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Whenever I see a post like this I will ask the member to please restate their request using English.

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Originally Posted by Nightwalker83

I just find it annoying when the user is from an English reading/writing background and they don't write properly (bad grammar, spelling, etc) in their posts.

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That just drives me up a wall....

Its seems I have hit a nerve with quite a few people on these forums.

Between this place (Vbforums) and the MSDN I have learned a lot. With the help of jmcilhinney and other like him, I have managed over the last four years to progress extensively from "Hello World!", to the point where I have actually made a little money from my hobby. I am by no means a professional but I could see a future in this for me.

I am guilty of just posting links to MSDN pages to those who ask for help. I feel I might try the approach of still posting the links but will type a few lines of explanation first.

And I am glad KiwiDexter you have lowered yourself to take time to reply to a noob like me. Im sure you will make your expansive experience avialable to myself and others on demand. ( why is there emiticon for someone sticking out there tongue and making a raspberry sound):D

Really guys? No one could at least gimme a lol for my post? =)

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Originally Posted by Powerstack

Really guys? No one could at least gimme a lol for my post? =)

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Try this... http://msdn.microsoft.com/

-tg

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Originally Posted by Powerstack

Really guys? No one could at least gimme a lol for my post? =)

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I didn't laugh out loud. I just chortled inwardly. I don't think "ci" has caught on yet though.

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Originally Posted by Powerstack

I have an idea for this game where you have a little square with a line coming out of it and when you hit the spacebar bullets come out. Then there's 4 destructible buildings in front of you. Meanwhile, about 30 aliens move from left to right, then decend, then they move from right to left until next thing you know they're on top of you!!!!

So far here's what I have:

Console.WriteLine("Hello World!")

Could someone help me fill in the blanks?

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Please don't post technical questions in the Chit Chat forum.

It wasn't a technical question per say ---- more like a joke.... <sigh> a joke that failed miserably it looks like...

How about we get the forums modified to have

[JOKE][/JOKE]

and maybe

[SARCASM][/SARCASM]

Actually, if you want to see how tolerance of new members has dropped off you've only got to look at the response "Hi, I'm new here and wanted to introduce myself" threads in CC get these days. Was a time these would get a pretty healthy number of "Welcome to the forums" responses. These days, nothing. My God we've all turned into a miserable bunch Grinches.

In fact, I think I'm going to go put it right.

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Originally Posted by Powerstack

It wasn't a technical question per say ---- more like a joke.... <sigh> a joke that failed miserably it looks like...

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I know, mine is joke too! High five.

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Originally Posted by FunkyDexter

Actually, if you want to see how tolerance of new members has dropped off you've only got to look at the response "Hi, I'm new here and wanted to introduce myself" threads in CC get these days. Was a time these would get a pretty healthy number of "Welcome to the forums" responses. These days, nothing. My God we've all turned into a miserable bunch Grinches.

In fact, I think I'm going to go put it right.

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Gitoffamahlawn!.... crazy bunch of no good kids....

-tg

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Originally Posted by Powerstack

It wasn't a technical question per say ---- more like a joke.... <sigh> a joke that failed miserably it looks like...

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Any yet you continue with technically malformed HTML. <rolleyes />

A perfect example...today, at one point in this thread, the OP basically asked us to write his code. I guess I kind of lost it in my reply <shrug /> but I mean...really? Google searching is not hard to do; unless what you're doing is obscure and unusual, it's probably been done before, documented to some extent, with samples lying around. It's just frustrating the amount of laziness that some people have. It's like they expect programming to just sort of come to them. I guarantee, just like ohters have said in this thread, I would not be as good as I am at programming without experimenting, doing my own research, and reading MSDN. I used to be that noob "plz cod 4 me kthx" but I mean...doing my own research and reading the documentation (:eek: reading!? The horror!) has done tremendous wonders for me.

It's definitely worth quoting two of his posts from that thread:-

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k thanks! :)

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and

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Meaning?(Give code:d)

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It could almost be a parody. Under the circumstances you were quite restrained.

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Originally Posted by FunkyDexter

It's definitely worth quoting two of his posts from that thread:-

and

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Meaning?(Give code:d) [/code]

It could almost be a parody. Under the circumstances you were quite restrained.

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I held back quite a bit; I did not want to be an absolute jerk to him, but give his post history...

EDIT: Silly dexter, your post is broken, so now i have to fix mine :D

I'm sure I don't know what you mean. You've clearly miss-quoted my quotes. Nothing to see hear, please move along.

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Originally Posted by FunkyDexter

I'm sure I don't know what you mean. You've clearly miss-quoted my quotes. Nothing to see hear, please move along.

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Hmm, yes, I guess I must have miss-quoted you. Silly forums and their upgrades :p

Miss quote is fine as long as you don't miss remember.

That is just under the bottom.

I've heard that Miss Quote is quite horrible with dictation, nothing comes out quite right.

-tg

Speaking about not quite right, have you spoken with Miss Behaving lately.....

Too busy trying to get Miss Informed to change her mind. Hopeless. Leaves me feeling Miss Understood ...

BB

Ok penagate --- I can say "lol" and mean it --- the "high five" made me laugh =)

I joined way back when there was no Google, and it was either the MSDN or the forums such as VB Forums (which weren't many back then). Knowledge itself was so hard to come by it would have been foolish to ask for working code samples. Most of the times people graciously posted code from some real app they had developed and we adapted it, or there were some tutorials (I still remember John Percival's) explaining how a particular task could be accomplished.

Nowadays I suspect most people are used to ready-to-use things and don't want to spend time building something up themselves. This isn't as bad in itself as the loss of inquisitiveness. The more they are able to use readymade tools and code, the less they are interested to know how things work behind the scenes, the real interesting part.

Coming to the newbies here, it's difficult to make out if the person is genuinely looking for a working code sample so he can adapt it/learn from it, or if it's a school assignment delayed for some reason and we are indirectly helping them in it. I suggest to err on the generous side and help them out if you can't clearly say who deserves it and who doesn't.

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@honeybee, as someone who also started programming before the web search engine days, although not as long before as some around here, it infuriates me that information is so easy to come by these days and yet so many people don't even make the slightest effort. How many people ask questions here without even a Google search and even when you tell them which type and member to use it's still "can you post an example" which really means "can you write my code for me so I don't have to try at all. I'm not intolerant of new forum members. I love it when someone asks a question and I say "use this member of this class" and they later post back that they looked it up and came up with their own solution and thanks for pointing them in the right direction but not actually doing the work for them. What I am intolerant of is lazy ingrates. Generation "Y should I bother" need a swift kick.

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I'm sure that there were plenty of lazy programmers around "in my day"

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Yeah, they just manifested differently. The number of guys I've worked with over the years who just used to copy lump of code from one part of the app and paste it into another part that was doing something vaguely similar without bothering to properly understand it first was truly terrifying. One of my team members once quipped that it wasn't code re-use but it was code recycling (to be fair, that guy was a good programmer who just had a rye sense of humour).

My personal bug bear isn't so much the people who ask lazy questions, I'm generally quite philosophical about that and often mildly amused by the steam coming out of the responders ears. What chaps my ass is the folks who ask a question, get an answer and then completely disregard it and proudly anounce they're going to do something utterly stupid. I'm reminded of a poster (who I shall decline to name) who asked why he was getting an error trying to insert a value into an identity column. The reasons and how to handle it (just don't insert into that column) were thoroughly explained. His response was to proudly announce that he was going to flip the identity_insert property on. You could practically hear the collective jaws of the forum hit the keyboards. A flood of responses saying "Err, are you sure? That sounds like a really bad idea to me" followed, some in full capitals, but he was not to be derailed from his diabolical scheme. I haven't hear that database is corrupt yet but it's surely only a matter of time.

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Originally Posted by FunkyDexter

(to be fair, that guy was a good programmer who just had a rye sense of humour).

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I would wryly suggest that this quote is ambiguous: It's just too clever to parse.

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It's bad when I have to google 3 out of 15 words in Shaggy's post.

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This tickled my laughing muscle.

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I would wryly suggest that this quote is ambiguous

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Ya know, even as I typed it I thought, "that doesn't look right", but couldn't for the life of me think what was wrong with it.:blush: Actually, scratch that, it was a deliberate pun meant to imply he drank too much. Yep, that was defintely it.

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It's bad when I have to google 3 out of 15 words in Shaggy's post

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Shaggy's I can just about cope with, it's the mangled txt spk posts that get me. LOL ROFL IS.

Pffft! I've seen far, far worse... some even since this thread was started... I've tried to refrain from linking to them in this thread... at least he said he'd try it... I've seen others that continue to go "I cant get it work, can u jud giv me cod?"

-tg

cheesse and crackers... I jsut had another one of those "can you explain that and give me examples" posts...(the context was that I suggested that the OP might want to use SQLCEClient instead of SQLClient to connect to his sdf file, rather than looking it up, he asks for examples) ... it's almost a shame the internet exists... these people would have been weeded out in the days of book references... *GASP!* Read? a BOOK?! hehehe... I wonder if maybe my next referenced material should be an actual book. "For an example see Mastering Visual Basic, Chapter 4, page 256... the section on ....."

-tg

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Originally Posted by techgnome

cheesse and crackers... I jsut had another one of those "can you explain that and give me examples" posts...(the context was that I suggested that the OP might want to use SQLCEClient instead of SQLClient to connect to his sdf file, rather than looking it up, he asks for examples) ... it's almost a shame the internet exists... these people would have been weeded out in the days of book references... *GASP!* Read? a BOOK?! hehehe... I wonder if maybe my next referenced material should be an actual book. "For an example see Mastering Visual Basic, Chapter 4, page 256... the section on ....."

-tg

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Or just give them one of these

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Mastering+Visua...+4%2C+page+256

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Originally Posted by thebuffalo

Or just give them one of these

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Mastering+Visua...+4%2C+page+256

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I love everything about that site.

Really??!?!?!?!? Somebody made a comment about the number of books you had? I grew up with so many books we didn't have places for them all. I'd go to a used bookstore near my house and return with large boxes of books. They weren't necessarily my books, or anybodies. I certainly didn't haul them all off to college with me (where would I put them?), but that was largely because my parents had more space.

I'm not going to lie, every time I pick up a book, I end up falling asleep. Something about reading and it on being on screen just doesn't intrigue me. Maybe it's because I'm a part of the next generation, all that public school lunch and what not.

As long as I am working... there will never be a such thing as a completely paperless office... I will find things to print... documents and/or reference materials.

-tg

As long as I am working...there will never be such a thing as a neat office.

I'm fine with reading on screen and editing on screen, but for serious reading, I much prefer a book. They don't take batteries, and they don't put me to sleep. Both of those features make them ideal for taking to the woods, or sailing. In fact, when sailing, I generally carry a good library with me, because sailing teaches patience.

@dday9: My tastes are the same as yours, though when you say war and history, they are practically the same. Most history seems to be about some war or another. At first I was heavily into the US Civil War and WW II. I then started branching to WW I, and now I pretty much grab whatever looks interesting from absolutely anywhere in the world and any time period.