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Comment by dghf | Hacker News Reader

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dghf

Telling people to kill themselves is bad, especially if there's any chance they might do so.

But the excerpt from the IRC log at the start is a horse of a very different colour.

The IRC user comes across as maybe a bit abrasive and certainly a bit exasperated, but at the end of the day he/she

- told the questioner exactly what they asked for

- established what they really needed

- told them that too

- (hopefully) taught them a lesson in how to express their needs

If <feline> was really "just sooooooo tired of beginners coming and asking stupid questions", presumably they wouldn't have bothered to: (a) answer a question (twice); (b) make sure they were answering the right question; (c) help the questioner phrase their questions better in future.

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Yeah, I feel like <feline> was less "ASCII BLASTING" and more emphasizing an important point (I don't think IRC lets you use italics or underlines so caps would be the only way to go). I've been that noob before (and still am) and I would have been totally satisfied with that answer. I felt no ill intent reading that IRC log and I feel like Mr. Shaw was just projecting his own anger on <feline>.

That said, I thought the rest of the essay was just as bad. To me, it was saying "hey, anon, you can't get under my skin! That's why I'm writing a full blog post about how you can't get under my skin, you skinny nerd." Also note that he closed off comments and (presumably) deleted all of them except for the two that were literally kissing his ass.

He definitely needs to check his ego.

You see this a lot in IRC channels, but you also see a lot of people just helping everyone. The secret is that most of these people have a pretty basic level of knowledge themselves, and that's one of the reasons they're in those IRC channels. They do it so they can find out gotchas and solve small problems to become better at something. I've done problem solving for strangers on IRC, and I must say: it works, in that it seriously improves your own knowledge.

And the thing is: this is one of the greatest things about open source ! You can actually easily get someone to help you with basic problems. You can just join one of these IRC channels and go from "mediocre C programmer" to "slightly-above-mediocre C programmer that knows 5000 gotchas most don't" in a month or two. You will get invitations to projects and you will find yourself far more motivated by helping out people than by, say, an online course.

But yes, IRC requires a bit of a thick skin. And whilst there are plenty of women and even teenage girls there, you quickly learn that on a topical channel you should not tell anyone who you are.

> (I don't think IRC lets you use italics or underlines so caps would be the only way to go).

Well, /actually/ it _is_ possibly to use other tricks than ASCII to emphasize words you think are important in IRC. Or _any_other_text_medium_.

(Note that ASCII is printed as italic by HN, since I typed <asterisk>ASCII<asterisk>)

Most IRC clients supports basic text formatting:

https://modern.ircdocs.horse/formatting.html

Yeah, as a noob I'd find this a lot less offensive then being told to type some mind-numbing text.

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