Especially in my early days venturing into Python (with which I am still only casually acquainted), I’d google a problem and end up on an SO question outlining my exact problem, only see “closed as duplicate” or a bunch of snarky comments about how the questioner didn’t RTFM or whatever.
Why do they hate people asking questions on this site specifically about asking questions? Part of being a noob is not just about not knowing the bare facts of a thing, but not knowing where to look for answers or even what to ask.
While I’m on this soapbox, I hate it when people say “just google it.” because most of the time I see that phrase it’s because that forum post is the first google result.
If I was a mod I’d lock this post with “duplicate” as a parody.
SO was good 10-15 years ago, but it has gotten bogged down in a combination of user elitism, mod incentives to do anything, and outdated answers remaining canonical.
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User elitism: You see this anywhere else too. Older users hold power on the site, and this tends to result in walling out those with actual refreshing ideas.
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Mod incentives: The system rewards mod actions, even if those actions aren’t the correct one. For example, closing a question as duplicate, even if it’s not, rewards the closer.
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Due to the above, the “correct” answer to a question never gets updated, and it doesn’t take later versions into account. As such the site becomes a collection of outdated answers to questions that may or may not still be relevant.
Source: Formerly prolific user of multiple stackexchange sites
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The folks who say “just google it” are often unaware of how their own experience allows them to determine good instructions from bad.
For instance, if I told you to flummox the bumdarten by fluxing the foogartner, how would you begin learning what any of those words mean? How will you know if the bumdarten docs you’ve found are even the current version?
But at some point we have all encountered someone who simply asks for help instead of figuring out how to do it. And those people are usually in management.
Anyone who unironically says just google it, and doesn’t google it themselves and provides a link to a concise answer should be shot on sight.
Same for the RTFM crowd. So many manuals are filled with so much fluff that just gets in the way of actually being useful.
Yeah. If you’re gonna be all high and mighty at least prove you’ve read it by citing chapter and verse to help the noob.
And sometimes it’s impossible to google something if you don’t know the correct keywords to find what you are looking for.
Never understood the issue with “closed as duplicate”, it always links to the original question so you get your answer there. And for most things even the duplicate has a solid accepted answer too. Maybe I visit a different part of the site through my questions?
Then you’re going to hate “just LLM it”.
