Thread

I’m not too fond of just asking stupid questions without any background info.

I’m 17 and I LOVE to solve problems and I ask people when I CAN’T solve one, or when I don’t know where to start.
Some of my generation just asks people before they’ve made any research (and it works, at least in my class, because I can answer them 😛 ), and I often would like to answer “Search it on Google or Wikipedia”, but that seems too advanced for most of them (and our class is supposed to be the best in our school *SIGH*).

For those having a hard time with CodeIgniter I recommend the award winning self help program from Thor.

Male: For thousands of years Americans have looked for answer to life’s difficult questions. Now,
  millions of people just like you are finding answers and taking charge of there lives.  Through
  the original, patented and proven program of Ohallas finest diety, Thor.

Thor: Treasure awaits you but beware of your woman folk treatury is deep within her.  By the coming
  of spring she shall be no more.

Female: Thor changed my life.

Male: Author of two bestselling self help books translated from the original runic into 25 languages,
  Thor has helped millions realize their dreams.

Thor: Beware of the trap set by the frost giants, carry your magic hammer.(Crowd Cheers)

Male: Avaliable on record or cassette the personal Norse power program looks to the myths of the
  Vikings for answers.

Female: Can you give my husband an ounce of advice to help keep things hot in the bedroom?

Thor: Take a longboat with 20 of your finest men, head to where the sun sets, there you will find
  a villiage, pillage thunder and burn all that you find

Male: And if you order now, you’ll recieve Thor’s subliminal tape series.  So you gain wisdom of the
  Gods while sleeping.

Thor: Accept the crystal cup at the feast beware of the dwarf.

Male: Thor’s personal Norse power program, call now 866-PILLAGE.  That’s 866-PILLAGE

I’ve never liked posting in forums for code related help - I keep thinking that I’ll be wasting someone’s time, noone will reply or I’ll have overlooked something very simple.  If I have a problem with a script I’ll go through it with die(print_r()); to try and find the cause of the problem.  If I want to find how to do something, I’ll look at what other people have coded and see if I can learn something from them.  If I want to know if something exists I’ll try and find it with google, or ask someone I know if they’ve heard about it.

just a quick note, I’m 19 and I don’t think that everything needs to be here 5 minutes ago, nor do i shy from researching a problem.

Maybe I’m an exception to the rule, or maybe your opinion of the current generation is incorrect…

Problem is, the majority of today’s generation.

:p

That allows for exceptions.

Just today I read a post complaining about how hard ActiveRecord was to figure out because they are not familiar with SQL.  Are you kidding me?

Ha. Yeah, I was going back and forward with that guy. He’s been polite about it, although his desire to be ignorant probably isn’t going to serve him well in life. Not in this world.

It would be great to help out everyone that needed help, but it’s certainly not possible. I’ve been somewhat inspired by the Community Voice features and now make it part of my daily routine to get on here and help a few souls out. I tend to answer questions that are either really simple to clear up or if I see that a person is truly perplexed or caught in the wonderland of learning something new.

I think rants like this are healthy for the community to an extent. But, I would recommend anyone that is here to promote the community should do their best to answer even the worst of requests with a high level of respect and politeness. You can spot a PHP newbie, SQL newbie, HTTP newbie, etc., from a mile away. Just try to point them to the resources that afforded you the knowledge you have and leave it at that. Coming from a background of only hacking Perl/CGI, ASP, and PHP scripts, CodeIgniter taught me proper OOP and PHP. I’d like for that to happen for some of these other newbies, too, if they have the willingness and patience for it.

Just today I read a post complaining about how hard ActiveRecord was to figure out because they are not familiar with SQL.  Are you kidding me?

Ha. Yeah, I was going back and forward with that guy. He’s been polite about it, although his desire to be ignorant probably isn’t going to serve him well in life. Not in this world.

It would be great to help out everyone that needed help, but it’s certainly not possible. I’ve been somewhat inspired by the Community Voice features and now make it part of my daily routine to get on here and help a few souls out. I tend to answer questions that are either really simple to clear up or if I see that a person is truly perplexed or caught in the wonderland of learning something new.

I think rants like this are healthy for the community to an extent. But, I would recommend anyone that is here to promote the community should do their best to answer even the worst of requests with a high level of respect and politeness. You can spot a PHP newbie, SQL newbie, HTTP newbie, etc., from a mile away. Just try to point them to the resources that afforded you the knowledge you have and leave it at that. Coming from a background of only hacking Perl/CGI, ASP, and PHP scripts, CodeIgniter taught me proper OOP and PHP. I’d like for that to happen for some of these other newbies, too, if they have the willingness and patience for it.

Great post.  I completely agree with you about trying to help and doing your best.  Every once in a while it feels like casting your pearls before ....  I believe the issue stems from a complete lack of web development experience.  Wether that lack of experience stems from being young (in some cases not very humble and thus hard to teach) or from assuming that since you have programmed for years you can easily develop for the web (in many cases not very humble and thus hard to teach).

or from assuming that since you have programmed for years you can easily develop for the web

Ha! I enjoy the occasional Well, I’ve been programming since ‘65 in BASIC and FORTRAN so don’t tell me I don’t know how a web server works…

I disagree. The hardest thing is getting started and if people need a little hand holding to build CI applications then so be it. This being said if fundamental php/mysql/etc/etc knowledge is missing then the codeigniter forum is no place to begin looking for help.

It is optional to answer questions.

If, in your mind, a question does not deserve an answer, simply pass it by in slience.

Like most CI users who have been around since the logo was a lightbulb, I have seen history repeat itself over and over.

The good news is that new users come in and answer the same old questions again.

When I browse the forums now, I only really pay attention to the ones with 0 replies that are dropping down the list.

Thankfully, they are usually deemed too trivial for others to answer, so it allows me to shine and build on my delusions of knowledge.

My all-time favorite question is:

What applications are Derek using in the blog tutorials?

When I see this, and I do with some regularity, my heart starts racing and I hit fast reply.

I would be truly grateful if others would refrain from answering this question.

I know the answer, I really do, and I need the extra posts to further my career in the EllisLab forums.

Thanks!

There is one particular member on these forums that especially drives me insane. They have never contributed anything useful and all of their posts read:
“I need codes to make [insert product here] - please help”

No… I will not give you the codes.

There is one particular member on these forums that especially drives me insane. They have never contributed anything useful and all of their posts read:
“I need codes to make [insert product here] - please help”

I know who that is… It’s Sa… :lol:

The reason there are such are large number of young people here that have the patience to learn and the patience to solve a problem by research is because generally speaking, people who love “programming” are wired for the love of knowledge of technical things.  Otherwise, they wouldn’t be programming. 

The problems I run into, generally, with the “got to have it now” generation are from people who really aren’t programmers, but they think programming is cool and they want to do something they are not wired to do.  They aren’t wired to do it because #1, they don’t have the sense or the patience to read the manual, and #2, they don’t have the sense or patience to get real help like attend classes or step through tutorials on the web.  If you don’t have the patience, please don’t try to program.  If you have difficulty understanding how to hook up a computer out of the box and turning it on, then leave programming to someone who does.  I’ve had programming questions like “I want to program online computer games like Quake.  I’ve never really used a computer before to do anything other than surf the internet.  My Dad has to turn it on for me.  Is there a book I can get that will show me how to write a game like this by tomorrow?”  You may laugh, but I’ve really had that question.  Ridiculous.  I told them 4 years of college or a good technical school is a good start on learning it.  Study hard, and someday maybe they will be worth something.

I think you really have something there, some people are not “wired” to be programmers.
I started when I was 9, so I guess I’m “wired” to be a programmer 😛

(but I don’t know, maybe everyone else thinks everything I code is crap 😝 )
Note: The sentence above was a joke

I think that people are so used to instant answers that they don’t need to research any more. For example. If I have forgotten a php function which was helpful a couple of months ago and I need to use again I have a choice. Spend precious time stalled on my application while I trawl through the function list hoping it will just out at me - OR - go to a forum, tell people what the function does and get a near immediate response with the function name.

Does this make me lazy? Perhaps. But I see it more like this. There are people who genuinely know their stuff. They read technical specifications and in depth changelog information. They feel joy inside when they find a slightly more effective way to solve a problem.

These people are the corner stone of any technical community. They help out the noobs, the lazy and the less knowledgable. This helps other people learn and pick up the technology. These people in turn learn new techniques. Some of these people will stick around to help the next generation of noobs and thus the cycle continues to rotate.

By answering these seemingly repetitive and sometimes idiotic question you are in fact doing some good. Thats my take on it anyway.

I think that people are so used to instant answers that they don’t need to research any more. For example. If I have forgotten a php function which was helpful a couple of months ago and I need to use again I have a choice. Spend precious time stalled on my application while I trawl through the function list hoping it will just out at me - OR - go to a forum, tell people what the function does and get a near immediate response with the function name.

Does this make me lazy? Perhaps. But I see it more like this. There are people who genuinely know their stuff. They read technical specifications and in depth changelog information. They feel joy inside when they find a slightly more effective way to solve a problem.

These people are the corner stone of any technical community. They help out the noobs, the lazy and the less knowledgable. This helps other people learn and pick up the technology. These people in turn learn new techniques. Some of these people will stick around to help the next generation of noobs and thus the cycle continues to rotate.

By answering these seemingly repetitive and sometimes idiotic question you are in fact doing some good. Thats my take on it anyway.

I really think that this thread is targeted at those who suffer from magical thinking.  Mr Wales pointed out a case where an individual constantly asks for “codes”.  In other cases its just ridiculous whining.  I mean the responses on this board depending on the time of day are not exactly lightning quick.  I cannot see how this would save you that much time unless certain people are hopped up and posting like a rat on acid.

As I see it this forum is best used as a place to bounce ideas off of others and the like.  It makes a good replacement for a team.  I have worked with outstanding development teams and it is very handy to have another set of eyes pointing out the obvious.  We tend to see what we want to see after programming along for a while and nothing beats a different perspective.  That being said I think it would be nice to see a forum or subforum depending on how you look at it to act as a jumping off place for those with less experience in web development. 

I get really annoyed when I see a post that is obviously someone who is just starting programming/scripting (and happened to choose CI to start) and it gets placed into one of the development forums like “Code and Application Development”.  I realize that they have nowhere else to put it but .... blech!  It is like jumping from Pink Floyd to Britney Spears as I open up a thread with quality pattern discussion and move to the next one in the same sub-forum where someone is asking how to write a select statement in SQL.

Maybe the forum gods could make a new sub-forum for beginners.  It may not fall into the forum plan though.  Something to toss around.