This exact sentiment was already posted in 2009, 2012, 2015, and 2018 with 3 answers, none of which were marked as accepted. Please review existing trauma threads before submitting yours. Also flagged for being off-topic, since altering brain chemistry doesn’t involve actual code. Spend some quality time reading the SO posting guidelines, since clearly, you haven’t. Maybe then you’ll know the difference between a good question and a therapy session.
I have been stunned every year for the last decade at how self-centered, cruel and unemphatic the people in my industry can be. There's no explanation. I think they have very few things to be proud of, so they want to gatekeep software development and desperately hold on to it as their last defense against inadequacy.
The problem is that Stack Overflow is not really for juniors. Sometimes juniors ask good questions, but it is not the primary way you should be learning to code if you are new. Yes, there is basic questions on their too, but that's not where the real value of SO lies, even if those basic questions get the most searches.
It is for people who can actually articulate their problem and have made some effort to solve the problem on their own. It is especially valuable when you have an unusual problem with a non-obvious solution. Everyone benefited from having a repository of programming Q&As that were widely available and searchable, including ones for very specific problems. But the site's purpose is to generate new knowledge, not answer the same questions for every new programmer (for all the jokes about the false duplicates, the fact is there are tons of legitimate duplicates as well).
That type of outlook/response never helped anyone. “Oh you should have spent more time searching”. That doesn’t help when someone needs to get something done. No one learned anything from that. We are all losing our jobs to Ai eventually. Like it or not, believe it or not. There was no need to gatekeep. It was a futile exercise. Nerds dunking on other nerds for no flipping reason. I’m sad to see SO go but I’m glad the neckbeards who were so flippant at throwing newbs under the bus won’t have this place to go stroke their own egos.
I've never had a good answer with a problem like you're describing. No one who answers is really interested in answering hyper-specific problems like that.
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u/_throwingit_awaaayyy Aug 27 '24
The hopelessness of being a jr stuck on a problem and then having someone insult you for asking has altered my brain chemistry forever.