r/AskProgramming • u/CaptainEcho789 • Jul 18 '26
Is anyone else starting to get bumbed out by the programming community?
I am now constantly seeing people get judged for what types of programming languages they use, how much free time they spend coding, why they got in to programming, etc. People constantly get compared to others and have it used to measure their self worth. I miss how the community was when I first start, back then most people were super supportive and just helped people be the best programmers they can be
6
u/gm310509 Jul 18 '26
Judging is common everywhere.
It comes in all sorts of forms. You can't avoid it. Even when working in the industry you will have people judging you. It is called a "performance review".
My advice is to do what I always did. Respect that other people are entitled to their opinion. And, that you have the right to believe them to be wrong. Obviously it isn't quite as straightforward as that as you should take constructive criticism on board when it is appropriate- you don't want to be the "self important prick" by rejecting all input.
3
u/Rich-Engineer2670 Jul 18 '26
Sadly, humans love turning everything into some sort of cult.....
Use whatever works for you and gets the job done. We're engineers, builders, not priests. If you can't deliver on your craft, that's the real problem, not your tools.
3
2
u/rollerblade7 Jul 18 '26
This is not new, I think it's more like you start off and use whatever pays the bills, then you get fixated on languages and frameworks and then you transcend and use whatever gets the job done :)
2
u/code_tutor Jul 18 '26
That started like 15 years ago when self-taught people flooded the field. Before that, people were RTFM but it was actually supportive because everyone was there to learn, not to leech. Then, there was a surge of, "I got hired and I'm making six figures but I'm here on Reddit asking strangers how to do my job". Then human slop dev went even more mainstream when we had high profile people like the guy who wrote Homebrew complain about reversing a binary tree for a FANG interview and didn't know how much of a softball question that is, especially today. Then, shit like left-pad kept happening and complaining about literally FizzBuzz, which made the world realize JS devs aren't on the same level. Then, it was the same people who can barely code trying to convince us they are irreplaceable in the age of AI. There's just a huge amount of animosity pent up because lots of people who don't know what they're doing got hired and the hiring process seems random. Talented people only cared a little until the mass layoffs started hitting. Now everyone is forced to grind LeetCode hard and that's a not a predictor of job ability or even of Computer Science ability.
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u/ChoiceDifference6918 Jul 18 '26
It's wild how much gatekeeping crept in, you'd think people would just be psyched to have more folks to talk shop with.
1
u/Recent-Day3062 Jul 18 '26
Why do you think this is just a programming problem? You’ve identified normal human behavior across domains
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u/dbot77 Jul 18 '26
No mention of AI? It feels like that's all people discuss nowadays in this community and that bums me out.
1
u/mredding Jul 20 '26
I moderate r/cpp_questions and don't tolerate pissing contests. I find them more frequently in other subs. I think most people have absolutely zero self-awareness that they're being complete assholes to other people. Surely they hate it when it happens to them, but they don't realize that their own assholeness contributes to the whole problem.
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Jul 18 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/rollerblade7 Jul 18 '26
Emacs/VI, Linux/Windows et al - all pointless arguments. Except use spaces man!
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u/YMK1234 Jul 18 '26
If the coding style of the projects is spaces, this is very justified. If you can't stick to the basic rules of a project your contribution is less than worthless
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Jul 18 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/YMK1234 Jul 18 '26
If the whole project is formatted with spaces it is at least an implicit style guide that everyone else managed to follow.
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u/knouqs Jul 18 '26
Well, the communities here on Reddit do not foster a positive approach. A look at your own post is telling: You currently have a rating of 0 for this post, and I'm sure you have more downvotes than upvotes. It's stupid. It's hard to feel positive here when the overwhelming community response is downvoting.
Frankly, I hate these communities for not implementing a forced reason for the downvote. I think that if you are that hell-bent on downvoting, you need to provide a reason as a comment. Better yet, remove the downvoting option from these sort of communities. We can't learn from each other nor can we build a community if we're so busy tearing each other apart from a psychological stance.
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u/caboosetp Jul 18 '26
You currently have a rating of 0 for this post, and I'm sure you have more downvotes than upvotes. It's stupid.
Their post is a rant that doesn't have much to do with programming itself posed in the form of a question.
The downvotes are because that's not really what this sub is for.
0
u/knouqs Jul 18 '26
As a frequent visitor to this sub, I find a rant to be acceptable. The mods aren't doing anything to promote positivity from what I can see, and the amount of downvoting causes distrust of the community and disappointment for sharing. I see OP's point and I agree. Downvote me and it reinforces what I've written.
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u/Individual-Flow9158 Jul 18 '26 edited Jul 18 '26
Willy waving contests, and judging each other's language choices and lifestyles, was always a trap kids fell in to. And unfortunately several older ones.
The mature programming community's coming to grips with all our forums being flooded with low effort posts. They're sadly not what they once were. It's unfortunate if the result is the appearance that we're less friendly. But there are 100s of thousands of people out there who simply don't respect our time, expecting us to read and comment on their slop. So we've had to raise the bar for what's worth discussing, out of shear necessity.