The questions we get these days!
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Is it just me or not but in my day we didn't ask for help at the first hurdle and things were hard then, no internet, remember compiling 16 bit code for the large memory model? We had to find the answers ourselves. It strikes me it is too easy today to throw an ill-formed/undefined question at CP and expect an answer! What happened to research? What happened to thinking out a problem till you got the the very nub of the issue; because once you know the right question to ask, the answer almost suggests itself. I mean, linked lists, writing data to a file? Thats really simple stuff that anyone studying a programming course should e able to work out for themselves!
============================== Nothing to say.
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Agreed. Though with regards to Type 2 - if they're intelligent enough to find a forum, signup for an account, verify the account, and post a question, one would think they'd know how to use Google!
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It's a human condition! People are inherently lazy and when encountering an obstacle, will naturally tend towards the easiest way out.
No one knows the things of a man except the spirit of that man; likewise no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God whom we have received. He who is joined to the Lord, is ONE Spirit with him(Jesus) - 1Cor 2:10-16 & 6:17
zaphnath wrote:
People are inherently lazy and when encountering an obstacle, will naturally tend towards the easiest way out.
Just like water and electricity.
"One man's wage rise is another man's price increase." - Harold Wilson
"Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons
"Show me a community that obeys the Ten Commandments and I'll show you a less crowded prison system." - Anonymous
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When speaking internally I find it's a matter of balance. If there's a team member who has an unresolved issue there is some benefit in them researching on their own to get a solution. However, this takes time and can impact the project timeline and budget. At some point you want them to speak up and say "hey, I could use some help". On the other hand, if they don't learn to research and solve their own problems they'll never become a decent dev. I don't think there's a simple answer to this - if anyone has one I'd be interested to hear. On the topic of stupid questions on forums, especially those marked as urgent, I tend to agree with more of the replies I've seen here... people have become lazy and want others to do the work for them. The number of simple questions that I've seen that should be known by anyone that has taken CompSci 101, read an intro book to programming, or is capable of being answered through the most basic of Google searches, deserves to be flamed and ridiculed. My personal favorites are the ones where someone replies with an answer and the original poster asks for more clarification and sample code because they don't understand (ie. will you do my homework for me?). At that point I'm thinking "you've been given the answer - take the time to understand it on your own time or hire someone to do it for you, but don't expect someone to do YOUR work for free". Maybe I'm being cynical? "There's no such thing as stupid questions... only stupid people."
G-Tek wrote:
"There's no such thing as stupid questions... only stupid people."
I've seen both.
"One man's wage rise is another man's price increase." - Harold Wilson
"Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons
"Show me a community that obeys the Ten Commandments and I'll show you a less crowded prison system." - Anonymous
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Richard MacCutchan wrote:
Back in the 60's I was
and I was in diapers, learning how to walk and talk.
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Perhaps we should raise the bar for forum subscription then? How about adding a little questionnaire? I vote for questions on pointer arithmetic and template metaprogramming. ;P
Great idea... though I'd be concerned if I'd still be allowed on the forums :) Maybe something as simple as the "skill testing" questions that you see on various contents would be enough to weed out the most ridiculous forum questions... what is (6+3)x(10/2)?
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Sure, but if all we ever got were questions of the type "wow, I've never thought of that, let me hack on it a bit", then Eric would be a lot less exasperated about what he sees on the forums. My point is, the reason we see so many dumb-ass questions these days (my hypothesis goes) is not because people in general have become dumber, but because reasonably smart people get answers to their reasonably difficult questions by looking them up on the web, so we're left with the lazy-asses who couldn't even bother to Google the damn thing, plus the occasional bright mind with an actually novel question.
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It's a human condition! People are inherently lazy and when encountering an obstacle, will naturally tend towards the easiest way out.
No one knows the things of a man except the spirit of that man; likewise no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God whom we have received. He who is joined to the Lord, is ONE Spirit with him(Jesus) - 1Cor 2:10-16 & 6:17
Generally that may be so, but those people appear more like mountain climbers who discover that they are not fit enough at the foot of the mountain and then look for somebody to carry them to the peak. What's the point? Does it make them fitter or more experienced climbers? Where is the accomplishment? Laziness can only get unliked chores out of the way. This raises the question why all those people work on things they are not interested in and obviously have no ambition to put any work into. As far as I know there is nobody forcing them to do this at gunpoint.
I'm invincible, I can't be vinced
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zaphnath wrote:
People are inherently lazy and when encountering an obstacle, will naturally tend towards the easiest way out.
Just like water and electricity.
"One man's wage rise is another man's price increase." - Harold Wilson
"Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons
"Show me a community that obeys the Ten Commandments and I'll show you a less crowded prison system." - Anonymous
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Is it just me or not but in my day we didn't ask for help at the first hurdle and things were hard then, no internet, remember compiling 16 bit code for the large memory model? We had to find the answers ourselves. It strikes me it is too easy today to throw an ill-formed/undefined question at CP and expect an answer! What happened to research? What happened to thinking out a problem till you got the the very nub of the issue; because once you know the right question to ask, the answer almost suggests itself. I mean, linked lists, writing data to a file? Thats really simple stuff that anyone studying a programming course should e able to work out for themselves!
============================== Nothing to say.
Erudite_Eric wrote:
Thats really simple stuff that anyone studying a programming course should e able to work out for themselves!
There is a major difference between studying a programming course and being enrolled in one.
"I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. " — Hunter S. Thompson
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Yeah, and you could get a really big one for a nickel, too. But perhaps I should stay on point.
About eight years ago, it was my duty to assist a young graduate student, who had an "intern" position with my employer, in getting to work and back each day. One day while we were in transit, this intern, whom we shall call Miss Smith, stunned me by saying with no trace of embarrassment that she never could understand the difference between disk storage and RAM, or why it was important.
Yes, you read that right. I'll wait while you unswallow your tongues.
Mind you, Miss Smith was quite intelligent, on the verge of receiving a Master's degree in Computer Science. She was near to completing a major, much needed transformation of our employer's extensive documentation database. But her education in Computer Science had exposed her only to interpretive tools such as Visual Basic, Access, and Excel. She had never had to run a compiler or linkage editor. She had never had to debug a program interactively. She didn't know what "assembly language" is. In short, she had never had to grapple with the physical reality underneath the virtual world maintained by her interpretive tools.
Yet Miss Smith's skills with those tools were considerable and quite valuable. I have no doubt that she received her Master's degree, and went on to become someone's well-paid employee, on the strength of what she knew.
At the time of the conversation mentioned above, I went into a great, gesture-filled, loathsomely detailed presentation on the differences between RAM and offline storage, why each was necessary and neither was sufficient, and what the divergence between the two could mean according to circumstances. It took the whole of an hour's ride, and I wasn't nearly finished when Miss Smith wished me a good evening, stepped gracefully out of my car, and fled screaming in terror for her dorm room. To this day, I can't be sure that she grasped any fraction of what I said...or, in all candor, whether it would have mattered if she hadn't.
It was possible for Miss Smith to get by without the knowledge under discussion because the tools with which she worked made it unnecessary. Whether it will ever become necessary is questionable; indeed, it becomes less and less likely as time passes and developers' tools increase further in power.
Now, what was that about linked lists?
(This message is programming you in ways you cannot detect. Be afraid.)
The young lady was far ahead of you :) Look at the details of virtual memory and paging. With a little imagination you can see that we actually could do without a traditional file system by placing everything into one huge virtual memory space. Data would be swapped between the disk and the memory as needed automatically. It would be different to what we are used to, but we would never have to deal with file systems again.
I'm invincible, I can't be vinced
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If a doctor posted an 'urgentz pls' post I would go find another doctor. Actually what they use is a vast library of books and material to check symptoms causes and cures. What we did in our day was use books too, and work it out ourselves by trying things out. It seems that experimentation today is dead.
============================== Nothing to say.
Erudite_Eric wrote:
Actually what they use is a vast library of books and material to check symptoms causes and cures.
Well, not really! I have done and still do a lot of programming, but my 'day job' was (I am retired) as an Anesthesiologist and Intensivist, and I was generally reckoned a pretty good one. In my speciality, you may have time to research problems you anticipate, but you frequently don't have time to research the unexpected ones, which are often more challenging. The skill comes in being able to anticipate more than 'the average bear' and particularly in rapidly extracting from your prior experiences and/or previous reading/learning the material that is most relevant to the current problem. In less acute specialities, there is more time to think, but putting the gestalt of the patient's presentation (not just signs and symptoms, but also past history and personal circumstances) together into a picture that leads to diagnosis and treatment involves much more than "checking symptoms causes and cures" in "a vast library". Medicine is still at least 40% Art.
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The young lady was far ahead of you :) Look at the details of virtual memory and paging. With a little imagination you can see that we actually could do without a traditional file system by placing everything into one huge virtual memory space. Data would be swapped between the disk and the memory as needed automatically. It would be different to what we are used to, but we would never have to deal with file systems again.
I'm invincible, I can't be vinced
(chuckle) Far enough, I suppose. Still, there's something chilling about a "Computer Science" major unaware of the functions of the computer's various components:
- She'd never heard of the CPU registers;
- She'd never been introduced to the concept of virtual memory;
- She had no idea that her whole development world was virtual;
- "Communications protocol? What's that?"
- "You mean there's more than one?"
Among the classical-era Greeks, physicians proposed a model of the human body as "a bag of blood," with organs floating in it here and there. Miss Smith's model of the computer was comparable...except that the organs were something of a mystery to her. She probably wished they'd "go away"...at least, after she'd escaped my tutelage.
(This message is programming you in ways you cannot detect. Be afraid.)
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G-Tek wrote:
"There's no such thing as stupid questions... only stupid people."
I've seen both.
"One man's wage rise is another man's price increase." - Harold Wilson
"Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons
"Show me a community that obeys the Ten Commandments and I'll show you a less crowded prison system." - Anonymous
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Generally that may be so, but those people appear more like mountain climbers who discover that they are not fit enough at the foot of the mountain and then look for somebody to carry them to the peak. What's the point? Does it make them fitter or more experienced climbers? Where is the accomplishment? Laziness can only get unliked chores out of the way. This raises the question why all those people work on things they are not interested in and obviously have no ambition to put any work into. As far as I know there is nobody forcing them to do this at gunpoint.
I'm invincible, I can't be vinced
CDP1802 wrote:
Where is the accomplishment?
Exactly!
CDP1802 wrote:
This raises the question why all those people work on things they are not interested in and obviously have no ambition to put any work into.
This seems to be the rule rather than the exception, and not just in our industry. When I was a teenager flipping burgers, my peers would complain about not having any money to go out, buy this, do that, etc. But when they clocked in for their shift, they then started complaining about having to work. Heaven forbid they get asked to work both Friday and Saturday night! :doh: As an aside, while my burgers and hot dogs took a bit longer to get out, they actually resembled the ones you would see on posters and tv commercials. I was proud of that. I hear much the same from adults today. My father-in-law used to call them clock watchers. As soon as they get to work, they're counting down the hours until quitting time. When Monday morning rolls around, they're already wanting Friday to get here so they can take a break. I realize not everyone is like this, and some folks may not be able to change jobs, but for those that are going through the motions just to get a paycheck...:mad: ;P
"One man's wage rise is another man's price increase." - Harold Wilson
"Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons
"Show me a community that obeys the Ten Commandments and I'll show you a less crowded prison system." - Anonymous
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(chuckle) Far enough, I suppose. Still, there's something chilling about a "Computer Science" major unaware of the functions of the computer's various components:
- She'd never heard of the CPU registers;
- She'd never been introduced to the concept of virtual memory;
- She had no idea that her whole development world was virtual;
- "Communications protocol? What's that?"
- "You mean there's more than one?"
Among the classical-era Greeks, physicians proposed a model of the human body as "a bag of blood," with organs floating in it here and there. Miss Smith's model of the computer was comparable...except that the organs were something of a mystery to her. She probably wished they'd "go away"...at least, after she'd escaped my tutelage.
(This message is programming you in ways you cannot detect. Be afraid.)
Our intern's favorite word used to be 'nowadays', especially when telling me about those oldschool thinges we 'nowadays' don't have to waste any thought about anymore. He already has begun to change his tune since he started writing some code for a 'weak' 1 GHz dual core ARM processor, but the young Padawan still has a lot to learn :) Seriously, this is the stuff they are taught and they don't have any choice but to believe it. I remember well how the Professor started with 'Nowadays (!) the compilers are better than the average assembly programmer' when I still sat at the school bench. He thought I was a bit arrogant when I told him that I usually don't aim for the average. He did not know that I had about 12 years experience in assembly programming at that time. Anyway, I can see how you can get a degree in computer science by specializing on the more abstract stuff.
I'm invincible, I can't be vinced
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Is it just me or not but in my day we didn't ask for help at the first hurdle and things were hard then, no internet, remember compiling 16 bit code for the large memory model? We had to find the answers ourselves. It strikes me it is too easy today to throw an ill-formed/undefined question at CP and expect an answer! What happened to research? What happened to thinking out a problem till you got the the very nub of the issue; because once you know the right question to ask, the answer almost suggests itself. I mean, linked lists, writing data to a file? Thats really simple stuff that anyone studying a programming course should e able to work out for themselves!
============================== Nothing to say.
Some of us actually enjoy the process of breaking down a problem and figuring it out, but are told that the manager doesn't care HOW we get the answer as long as we get the answer NOW!!! Solution, turn to teh interwebs, ask the question and continue to work on the answer as you await a reply.
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Generally that may be so, but those people appear more like mountain climbers who discover that they are not fit enough at the foot of the mountain and then look for somebody to carry them to the peak. What's the point? Does it make them fitter or more experienced climbers? Where is the accomplishment? Laziness can only get unliked chores out of the way. This raises the question why all those people work on things they are not interested in and obviously have no ambition to put any work into. As far as I know there is nobody forcing them to do this at gunpoint.
I'm invincible, I can't be vinced
CDP1802 wrote:
Generally that may be so, but those people appear more like mountain climbers who discover that they are not fit enough at the foot of the mountain and then look for somebody to carry them to the peak. What's the point? Does it make them fitter or more experienced climbers? Where is the accomplishment?
Your analogy... There are in fact many people at the bottom of that mountain that... - Really want to do it themselves. - Want to do it the 'correct' way - Accept the challenge - Accept that they must spend time learning. And despite that have no idea how to actually get started and certainly have no idea what/how to ask questions. And some do not even understand what a "mountain" is.
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Perhaps this a case of "preservation bias"? Today any reasonably smart person with an "average" problem can find answers by themselves (by searching web forums, online books, Wikipedia, etc). Therefore there's a world of questions that get answered without ever being registered (e.g. by being posted to a forum). With the middle ground all but covered, questions will virtually always come up from the extremes: 1. Very difficult and/or novel questions from very smart people, who did look for references but couldn't find any; 2. Trivial problems from very stupid people, who couldn't bother to (or didn't realize they could) look it up by themselves. The state of mankind being what it is, it's not hard to figure that type 2 questions will come up much more often than type 1.
xperroni wrote:
With the middle ground all but covered, questions will virtually always come up from the extremes:
1. Very difficult and/or novel questions from very smart people, who did look for references but couldn't find any;
2. Trivial problems from very stupid people, who couldn't bother to (or didn't realize they could) look it up by themselves.That however is a matter of perception. I suspect there are a number of mathematicians that would find any number of problems "trivial", yet which even the most enthusiastic beginning hobbyist would find very difficult. As an example in programming I now find it trivially easy to understand recursion and even to unroll a recursive methods. But I also remember that when I was first introduced to recursion it took me 18 months to finally understand it. Further your simplistic scenario ignored the simple statistical fact...people that post here, by definition, must be those that even if they did do research did not find or did not understand the answers they did find. Thus there could be tens or hundreds times the number of people who are successfully learning by themselves.
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Is it just me or not but in my day we didn't ask for help at the first hurdle and things were hard then, no internet, remember compiling 16 bit code for the large memory model? We had to find the answers ourselves. It strikes me it is too easy today to throw an ill-formed/undefined question at CP and expect an answer! What happened to research? What happened to thinking out a problem till you got the the very nub of the issue; because once you know the right question to ask, the answer almost suggests itself. I mean, linked lists, writing data to a file? Thats really simple stuff that anyone studying a programming course should e able to work out for themselves!
============================== Nothing to say.
Erudite_Eric wrote:
in my day we didn't ask for help at the first hurdle and things were hard then, no internet, remember compiling 16 bit code for the large memory model?
16 bit code? Oh, we used to dream of having 16 bits! And you try and tell the young people of today that ..... they won't believe you. :-D
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined." - Homer
