Luckily, I persevered, and I give back to the programming community by always being kind to the folks that ask me for help; but I always help others offline and not in hostile web forums.
Even if you're asking good beginner questions that don't already have an answer, you get tired of reading all the bad ones.
I just signed on and saw this one (#3 in my personalized "new questions"):
https://web.archive.org/web/20231016163745/https://stackover...
The person asking the question put in minimal effort and showed no concern for people answering. Why am I sifting through your merge sort code when you're asking "why can't it open the file?"
I got so good at Java that I became a Lab/Teaching Assistant my last two years in college. And I helped folks the best I could in person: always kind, always patient, never blaming the student even if they didn't want to learn and just wanted to pass the Lab; that is an obviously wrong student attitude to have, but whether they cheat or want the answers without learning is between the student and god. I can only try my best to help.
Who cares if someone wants an answer to some test or project? Who cares if their question is not deep enough or poorly written? Just answer their question or don't. You don't need to impose your moral sense of fairness unto them: it's not that deep. And you especially don't need the snark and the putting down of others. Again, the simpler thing is to not engage at all which is obviously not what happened or happens under the sludge and grime of SO answers.
It's a more pleasant interaction when someone is polite. -- Whereas, if you get rude answers, you'll be discouraged from participating.
Asking good questions is pro-social. People are going to be more willing to help if the questions are well thought out. -- Whereas, asking in an anti-social way discourages people from helping out.
It's still possible to ask questions even if you get snarky responses back; and it's still possible to answer lazy questions... But in either case, it's easy to see why people might not like that.
Expectations vary; in some settings, it's going to be more acceptable for questions to be a more raw "I'm stuck and I need help" than in others.
There is an asymmetry: people giving answers are more able to help those who are asking questions. If the people learning don't like the teachers, they'll have to go elsewhere (& learning is harder). If the teachers don't like the students, they don't have to teach.
Please link them! They should still be there, and we should be able to analyze them. The strength of Stack Exchange is that it is factual, like on Wikipedia, users are discouraged to be emotional and encouraged to to prove their theories.
> who cares if someone wants an answer to some test or project?
A visitor from Google, who doesn't want to search through dozens of "too localized" problems, that don't apply in his case. There are other places to ask such questions, and the strength of SO/SE lies in its ruleset.
I know from experience that when I'm frustrated, I need to keep trying something smaller (or otherwise get more information) until it becomes clear what's not working.
The kind of steps it takes to ask a good question goes hand in hand with the kind of steps you'd take to solve the problem yourself. (Similarly: with domain knowledge, you know what to look for; without domain knowledge, you don't know what to ask about).
If I put too high a value on other people's time, I'm never going to ask questions, and may be slower than if I'd asked a question at a suitable time. (Whereas, putting too little value on other people's time ... can cause friction).
So your course is just to avoid those, not downgrade them.
It takes a lot of guts to ask for help. And being put down when you're vulnerable: exposing an ignorance or a lack of understanding, is not a good feeling at all. For me, it always sticks for a long time until I forget it.
Among coworkers you know, yes, but among internet strangers?
Those who answer questions want good questions but those who ask good questions probably solve them on their own. Leaving things as they are.
"Why won't my docker container build?" Well, because there's a typo in your instructions and it says so clearly in the error output. Of course we get tired of answering these types of questions.