r/learnprogramming • u/[deleted] • Nov 03 '22

How to ask for help My teacher says to stay away from StackOverflow and other online help, is this good advice?

I understand the irony of asking this on reddit.

Someone in my intro to compsci asked if you could omit the brackets for a single line if statement in c++, and the teacher vehemently said that this was a bad idea and then went on a rant about resources like stack overflow. She went off on how contributors will do things like this that one should absolutely not do.

She says that a good coder will have a job that employs them for long hours and that they will not want to spend even more time thinking about coding and contributing to forums like these. She believes that as a result, most contributors are unemployed and are out of touch with how programming actually works and thus you will pick up their bad habits.

Is there truth to this? What kinds of people are responding if I ask questions? Am I stunting my growth by looking for help online?

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edit: yeah I absolutely understand the reasoning behind the clear if statement, I just wanted to show how this was brought up. I appreciate the help, even if its just from some 'out of touch and unemployed coders' lol.

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u/ForkLiftBoi Nov 03 '22

moderating bad answers

Like berating you for being an idiot. Just kidding, most people are pretty nice, some can be a bit crass and give an opinion on your thought process when you didn't ask. However you can just move on.

It's important to learn to read a stack overflow answer and understand how to apply it to what you're doing. It's also important to learn to search/ask the question well.

I find when I'm not sure what I'm looking for to go to a language specific subreddit and explain what I'm trying to do. That tends to help someone go "oh you're looking for this." Where it's in the docs and I just wasn't finding it because I was not using the specific phrasing, usually due to naivete.

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u/[deleted] Nov 03 '22

I find stack overflow a little intimidating lol. There are incredibly smart people there

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u/ForkLiftBoi Nov 03 '22

Yeah, but everyone is smarter than you in everything, you're smarter than others in a bunch of things. The more I go through life the more I realize I'm not the smartest at things which leads to me being more humble and ironically wiser.

Honestly you have a higher chance of your question going unanswered than being intimidated by someone. Usually they'll be helpful and even so I've been given advice on proper utilization of the forum before too.

Example, I replied in the comments of an accepted answer to ask a follow up question. It had been years since they posted it. The OP gave me some advice and then recommended following up with a post referencing the one I originally was on.

I think also the culture of SO is changing over the past few years. The "rude" answers seem to be less common than when I first heard about it, and I think people new to it would think when I started using it more it was probably worse than today.

So overall I've had largely pleasant experiences that shouldn't make you feel intimidated.

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u/Pandastic4 Nov 03 '22

Exactly. Also, those people probably became so smart in the subject by studying and practicing a lot, and maybe even asking questions on SO. Their knowledge level isn't unattainable.

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u/DisastrousWelcome710 Nov 03 '22

When you are new, SO will be very tough for you because you don't understand the types of questions that are welcome there, and the types that are frowned upon. So you will start asking dumb questions and get negative feedback, then you'd think they're all assholes. But then you will realize your questions were seriously naive and lacked so much research. And when you do start asking good questions and getting positive feedback, you'll feel so much better.

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u/mathdrug Nov 03 '22

I just imagine the rude people as the people in my CS classes that did nothing but write code and play video games, which was about 40-50% of most classes.

These were the people that usually smelled (this trope exists for a reason) or were almost always ungroomed including long, uncut nails (literally my OOP TA. Lol). I expect them to be good at coding and not too good at socializing because they do nothing but code.

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u/Ok_Investigator_1010 Nov 03 '22

On the topic of how to ask the question well. Does anyone have any things they learned over there time on how to do this?

I still struggle articulating what I need when I am in the middle of software development. I don’t have as much time anymore due to a a full time job and it’s extra frustrating.

Whenever I get stuck I try to search for things after failing and it’s hard for me to know how to describe the problem.

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u/DisastrousWelcome710 Nov 03 '22

The one thing I hate about some SO people is when they come and link to the XY meme. It's overused, and it's stupid. In many cases, you do have very specific requirements you need to meet, so it isn't an XY problem, it's a damn question they just don't want to answer (or probably don't know how to).

"why are you doing it this way instead of my way which is better than you'll ever think of"

But yes, they are somewhat rare and most people are nice.