useless rant about rudeness inside

lol, "tends to be a tendency"

niiiice

One should avoid taking up physics, I'd think. Computer science hobbyists are sweet and gentle in comparison. :)

I'm just kidding. One should take up everything that catches one's eye, and f*** the bastards. People with a chip on their shoulder should not be taken seriously whatsoever. They forgot how to have fun, and should be looked at with sympathy, not fear.

And yeah, I agree... Oluseyi is a no-bs type of person, which is completely different than the above mentioned folks, who tend to be ALL bs. :)

Haha, yeah.

Oddly enough, I used to work with this guy pursuing a masters in physics, and he was nice as pie. If you asked him about quaternions, his face would light up like it was Christmas morning and he would tell you everything he knew about them.

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Original post by CDProp Haha, yeah. Oddly enough, I used to work with this guy pursuing a masters in physics, and he was nice as pie. If you asked him about quaternions, his face would light up like it was Christmas morning and he would tell you everything he knew about them.

This reminds me of a guy named Lubos Motl. The guy is very brash, but entirely on the ball. If you ask him about physics, he'll tell you the coolest stories until the cows come home. :)

I'm in full agreement here. I'm only replying to vent about it, but my input here is also pretty useless. =)

I've been dealing with some people (one in particular) who is more interested in arguing (I'm sure it's "debating" in his eyes) than helping the point of the topic. I am trying to be as reasonable as I can be, but I keep failing to keep my own mouth shut, which I am now learning I should be doing. Every time I respond to the guy, I never say anything to be openly aggressive in return. In fact, I said right out "I respect you as a programmer. I bet you could TRASH ME at design any day of the week." He continues to argue that my habits are bad, and he's constantly implying I am so inexperienced that I really should be sorry for posting while he's around. (Of course he never said that, but it's hard to tell with his neurotic NEED to suggest what should be done) This went one for 2 topics, not much, but it's became a large enough issue for me to be a concern. I know, I sound like a loser, but I'm just complaining. =P

My frustration stems more towards myself, because again, I am lame enough to respond. I KNOW I'm better than that! My rating begins to drop. My rating is where it is now because I open my mouth in my defense, even if each defense is non-bias and concedes to some point of the other guy. Why does this frustrate me? Because the rating is pretty much defined as a number to measure some form of credibility on here. Now I know what NOT to do, but these people tell me I'm snippy and are rude (You check my profile if it's important enough to check...), but MY rating goes down when they are, but I'm not! (While they are really high. In fact, GameDev.net seems to be in really high standing, but for reasons I'm having trouble seeing with even a moderator being kind of an ass) It's only an issue for me because I hate the idea of being ethically measured by a variable anyway. A number is a number... But what it represents...? God, I think there has to be some face-to-face conversation before you start sizing someone up.


So does this mean if I come in to the Beginner forum and act like a snob, I'll be more credible? What is this?

Again, I'm blabbing. It feels good to complain on the site that had the issue though.

Moving to the lounge.

For Beginners is not for coddling. I am entirely unsurprised at the trend towards more aggressive discussion in that forum, because it is frequented by beginners (imagine!) who tend to be more impressionable than more experienced developers. As such, they may lack the discipline or comprehension to understand misinformation and generally bad advice when it is presented, and as such, it is understandable that said misinformation be vigorously rooted out.

Forums are not a medium of communication that allow for a lot of subtlety, alas, so often comments can be interpreted as being more abrasive than was actually intended -- or similarly, sometimes it is better to be direct at the risk of being blunt.

Many times, complaints are raised purely based on misunderstandings, and/or issues relating to not having a thick enough skin (to tell someone directly that they appear to lack experience in a given domain, for example -- something I do quite frequently -- is not necessarily intended as an insult to the person but rather an observation based on their own presentation). It happens, it's the internet. Some people act like bullies on the internet, hiding behind their relative anonymity, and some people are just abrasive all around.

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Original post by zyrolasting So does this mean if I come in to the Beginner forum and act like a snob, I'll be more credible? What is this?

But you already did that. You were the one who acted like an arrogant asshat in that thread. The response was not so great, was it ?

Look, I'm going to be blunt here. Zahlman, the guy you seem to have a problem with, is an expert C++ programmer. You, on the other hand, are a complete noob. There's nothing wrong with this. Everybody's been there. That's what the beginner forum is for. But the idea of that forum is also that beginners should follow the advice of professionals who invest their valuable time into helping them out for free.

Zahlman was in no way rude. He only gave you valuable advice, and pointed out that your approach was flawed. Which is entirely correct. You, instead of following the advice of an expert in that domain, start to argue around and play the drama queen. Zahlman has a ton more experience with this than you have. When he tells you to not do something in order to avoid serious technical complications later on, then the right answer is most certainly not "I disagree". Zahlman knows exactly what he is talking about. You don't.

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Original post by zyrolasting Every time I respond to the guy, I never say anything to be openly aggressive in return. In fact, I said right out "I respect you as a programmer. I bet you could TRASH ME at design any day of the week." He continues to argue that my habits are bad, and he's constantly implying I am so inexperienced that I really should be sorry for posting while he's around. (Of course he never said that, but it's hard to tell with his neurotic NEED to suggest what should be done) This went one for 2 topics, not much, but it's became a large enough issue for me to be a concern. I know, I sound like a loser, but I'm just complaining. =P

Your groveling does not translate to "Shut up because I'm right".

Nor does Zahlman's desire to give you and others the option of improving your coding habits when you so readily admit lacking the experience to have perfect ones all around translate to some sort of neurotic syndrome. He's not forcing anything on you, and despite this being a public forum where many reply not just for the sake of the original poster -- but lurkers and others who might come across the thread as well -- he'd quite probably stop responding for your sake alone if you gave him a nice and simple "Thanks but no thanks" when it comes to such advice.

Instead we get this whiny gossipy insulting preschool crap leveled against one of the nicer, yet technically accurate people on these forums. He wasn't the highest rated non-mod (now tied with ToohrVyk) for nothing.

Now, me, I'm one of the abrasive all around types jpetrie just mentioned -- feel free to whine about me as much as you want -- at least there you'll have sound footing. You want credibility? Even a jackass like me can earn it by doing little more than keeping my head out of my ass, not assuming neurosis, malice, or snobbery where there isn't any, and helping out with an open mind. Okay, maybe that seems like a bit much -- but it'd at least be a start to do a single one of those things, wouldn't it?

(suggested reading -- and yes, you should be safe to assume neurosis malice and snobbery where there actually is some without adversely affecting your desire to credence)

---

Back to thread topic: Yeah, those jackasses like MaulingMonkey in the beginner forums, eh? [lol] He seems to frequent the lounge too <_<

Hmmm, didn't seem necessary to move this to the Lounge. Then again, it probably wasn't necessary for me to post it to begin with (but then why not just delete it?). Up to the mods, I guess.

Anyway, as I hinted at in my original post, I do definitely understand the difference between acting like a jerk, and being helpful in a plain way such as to appear tactless or without subtlety. I still think that there is too much of the jerky stuff, though. Again, I won't name names, but the person or people that sort of spurred this thread on were basically entering topics where the questions were already answered by other helpful, more-tactful people and re-hashing the answers, thus offering nothing new, but doing so in a very rude and condescending tone.

I just think if you're going to swagger around For Beginners like you're the hottest little programmer under the sun, you should at least bring some helpful information to the table.

1) it is REALLY easy to sound like an ass in writing. emotions are a lot harder to convey, expecially when still taking technical.

2) being an "Ass" and being "stern" are two totally different things. and teaching is sometimes about being stern. People get things wrong, they hear random stuff and believe it, or they think they know best (usually cause they have never seen the other side, but also because they fear doing things differently). Being tough on a beginner is sometimes the only way. EXPECIALLY when it comes to the lines like [google] or MSDN! or C++FaqLite! Teach a man to fish an all. It makes no sense to hand out answers when it is important to bash someone on their methods before handing out answers. That way maybe they will have an easier time finding answers next time.

3) It is really REALLY easy to forget person X is NOT in your head. Sometimes what seems logical, simple and nicely worded to you just comes off as you talking down to someone. Things YOU take for granted "learn to google!" can sound like you being an ass to someone who spent 2hrs googling but isn't as good and thusly is already upset and getting told to google doesnt help.

I honestly don't think there is too much rudeness in the Beginners forum at all. I didn't read the thread that is being referred to, but I can pretty well picture how it went. These forums have a lot of professional game (and otherwise) developers who enjoy sharing knowledge with others. They know what they're talking about and they respond to your post to help you.

I started coming to this site six years ago with some experience in game development, but otherwise a complete noob. Here I am six years later, a professional game designer, and now I feel it is my turn to impart some input on some of the subjects I have experience with. I'm not an expert on everyone (particularly when it comes to programming), but I still find it a little aggravating when someone starts arguing with me on the simplest things that they have no real world experience with. Honestly, if you're posting in The Beginner's forum, isn't it because you're looking for input from someone with more experience than you? Otherwise, why are you posting there?

Sometimes the same info is restated by multiple people. If anything that should be taken as reassurance that the info probably is useful.

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He continues to argue that my habits are bad...

That is a very positive thing. Your bad habits (which we all had at one stage) are only holding you back.

Its like if you were learning to play tennis with the wrong end of the racket. If you ask for advice on how to play, the first thing an expert is going to point out is that you are doing it wrong [smile]

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This went one for 2 topics...

I assume you meant "on".

I can't speak directly for Zahlman, so I will just give my idea of what I think happened.

My primary way of browsing the forums is through the "Active Topics" list. I scan quickly for subjects I think are interesting or that I can help with. I don't really pay too much attention to the original poster, I usually concentrate on the post and any code. As such, I often end up repeating things (like "prefer not to use a C prefix on class types, it is pointless". [wink]) to the same people.

Maybe such people think I am angry, or following them around trying to make them feel bad for not following my advice. You can see how it is easy to invent ideas about what is going on in the other persons mind.

It's easy to misinterpret intention when one has only text to work with. In particular, it's easy to see arrogance where only bluntness and helpful advice were intended. Also, I've found that in almost all arenas of learning, people who are less skilled than they realize tend to take offense at the Socratic method; they incorrectly think that the incessant questions are meant to make them seem stupid rather than to encourage them to use critical thinking to discover the solution themselves. I've made this mistake myself.

But it seems the primary reason why disputes like this happen is that the person who claims to have been a victim of arrogance is a bit arrogant himself and doesn't like appearing to be inexperienced by having a clearly experienced programmer pretty much tell him he's doing everything in a poor manner.

In the end, the best programmers today are the ones who were most eager to take the advice of experts ten years ago when they were learning. Indeed, the best programmers are the ones who will be tempted to quote what I just said and remark that even the best programmers are always learning. [smile]

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Hmmm, didn't seem necessary to move this to the Lounge.

The CSI forum is for comments and suggestions reasonably targetted at improving the site -- directed to the staff, mainly. In such a forum, your post equates to "don't be mean," for which there is nothing the staff can do. The 'mean filter' for forums hasn't been invented yet.

Another interpretation of your post in that forum could have been that it was directed at me, and that you intended to say I should police the FB forum more rigorously for people "being mean" and punish them appropriately. I doubt that's actually what you intended, however -- and you got my response to that line of inquiry in my first post in this thread anyway.

So it seemed prudent to move the thread into a more generalized off-topic discussion forum for random crap.

That said, however, random crap is not a license for everybody to harp on specific users and drag the drama from other threads all over the boards. Kindly confine further discussion to the general topic at hand ("people being mean on the internets" is one thing, "user X's behavior in some other thread" is something else entirely). If you wish to discuss the latter topic, find the thread in question and follow up there, or in a PM.

Just keep working on your own skills until the day you die, and you will pass these losers. Maybe they've been in the game longer than you, but you can beat them.

An interesting post... I'm always interested when it comes to issues pertaining to interpersonal skills. A skill which is gaining more and more prominence in the work place and about time too! As Human Beings, socials skills are of the utmost importance.

When I first came on this site for help I was completely slated by anonymous idiots. When I argued my case against said idiots, I got slated by a handful of other members in the community and suffered a reputation plunge.

I won't name names however... It was all sooo long ago. I've changed to a new account here and at least when I ask for help now I don't get bashed. But the problem back then was BAD enough for the moderators to begin a "Stop Bashing The Noobs!" campaign.

Since then GameDev has cleaned up its act a little and at least things ain't as bad as they used to be.

However, what I've taken from this experience is to NOT get involved in pointless arguments. We all have our own opinions and should be free to air them, but sure... There are a LOT of people here who believe that their point of view is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but.

If I can learn from their point of view then so be it. But if I believe their point to be invalid in some way, I tend to keep that to myself. Otherwise you'll just end up wasting each others time and energy... And of course, suffer a possible reputation drop in the process.

I'm all up for debates of course... But something tells me that this site ain't the place to do it.

Holy crap man, stop wearing your feelings on your sleeve. If you get offended by someone who comes across as a little bit of an ass, then you're in for some serious growing pains when you have to work in an environment with them.

In your case, I suggest you get humble and listen to the sage advice of experts. Your feelings and emotions will get in the way of getting what you want. Don't like someone? Deal with it and move on. If it really bothers you, confront the person directly and tell them what you have issues with. Either there's a misunderstanding, miscommunication, or blatant assery. Whichever it is, it can be cleared up.

Personally, I like the people who can be assholes when its necessary. They're not going to walk on egg shells around a truth which may be sensitive to some people.

My learning philosophy is this: If you ask a question or make a statement, prepare to be humbled and/or corrected. Then, be happy that you actually got a genuine response.

Think of it like this. If you ever work on a professional development team and a company, a product, the customers of this product, and your coworkers all depend on your ability to write good code, you'll be very thankful to those people who weren't afraid to step on your sensibilities a bit to make sure you learned good practices and came out with a genuine understanding of things.

Honestly, rather than getting upset that something you did wasn't perfect or that something you said wasn't correct, you should delight that you have the opportunity to learn from some truly skilled and experienced programmers.

Have you ever played a multi-player strategy game? These usually involve some form of know your enemy because you can't cause someone to lose without knowing what would make that person lose. Sure, you get the basics, such as having to destroy all the units of that person, outmaneuvering them to hit weaker points, splitting them into groups that you can pick off one at a time, and so on. But none of these tells you anything about your enemy as a human being.

On the other hand, when you're on the losing side against a human player, you come to notice first-hand what problems you have. You hate being attacked in several locations at once not because you don't have enough troops to defend both locations, but because you don't have enough brainpower to examine both attacks, select which one you need to defend, and defend it. You hate to have your resource collectors destroyed not because they reduce the resources you earn, but because you don't have enough brainpower to regularly check how many resource gatherers you have and rebuild those that are missing.

As people get older and more experienced, they become able to place themselves in their opponent's position. If I was him, could I handle being attacked here and there despite having more troops at my disposal? If I was hit there, would I have enough thinking time to plan a devastating attack or would the rebuilding take too much effort? Would I have enough skill to save this important unit and also micromanage the other units for maximum efficiency?

The same happens with most other skills: at first, you can't imagine what it feels like for others. You certainly can manage on your own, but when someone else makes a suggestion it's hard to understand why that suggestion is a better alternative. In fact, a lot of people do make stupid suggestions without really thinking them through (I tend to do so when I'm sleepy, for instance, and SiCrane comes around and corrects me [smile]). Lack of understanding of the alternatives makes it hard to judge whether the alternatives are good or bad, which leads to bad choices in terms of design, methodology and technology.

The problem is that people aren't willing to change. Changing requires learning new things, which means initial inefficiency and lack of tangible results, which in turn reduces motivation for going forward. And since they don't intend to change, what's the point in studying the benefits of an alien methodology that you wouldn't adopt anyway?

Strategy games have their own way of getting their point across. If your opponent can pinpoint your human weaknesses, he'll just trample over your dead body time and time again until you learn from your mistakes or give up. I can still remember Red Alert 2, a video game where I managed to stay in the top-ranking French players for a short while. I was pretty good at that game, in single-player mode: I'd take advantage of the weak AI, build my defenses on a single side of my base, and slowly grow an army of long-range units while the enemy crashed against my turrets, then simply march over the enemy base. Then, I started playing online. First game, my turret was up and five Allied mobile assault units entered my base and burned it to the ground. Second game, my turret was up and three Soviet tanks entered my base and burned it to the ground. Third game, my turret wasn't even up when a platoon of Allied GIs entered my base and—wait for it—burned it to the ground. Fourth game, five Allied mobile assault units entered my base and were quickly mowed down by seven Allied mobile assault units of my own, which proceeded to burn the enemy base to the ground.

That's a beautiful way of learning. However, the Information Technology world is much more forgiving than a strategy game : you'll still manage to write programs that manage to do their intended result after a lengthy development time, you'll still manage to find small contractor jobs, and you'll still manage to get a job at a large company because they have low expectations or a lousy screening process. There's no "you only win when the opponent gets disconnected" situation, which means there is no "improve or give up" ultimatum that could push you out of your mediocrity into the tier above.

Of course, sometimes it does get nasty. That software you're writing is so far behind schedule and budget that you get laid off. Or your project is so bug-ridden that you pull three all-nighters making a small demo version work for a press conference, and the demo version still crashes on the main menu. Or you craft an exquisite architecture with design patterns and classes and objects and small furry C-string manipulation, and the result runs at a measly two frames per second on a last-generation $3000 computer. But when that happens, it isn't as obvious as having three heavy-duty Soviet tanks mowing down your base three minutes into a game.



And if it's less obvious, then you probably don't know what went wrong—most of the time 99% of what you do is correct, but 1% is incorrect and, had you done it right on the first try, 50% of your subsequent work would have been unnecessary.

Did my 3D engine project go wrong because I used a "C" prefix in front of my classes, and an "m_" prefix in front of my member variables? I didn't know prefixes were so dangerous! Well, it probably didn't matter—you lost maybe 24 hours of your life writing useless prefixes out of a project worth a thousand man-hours. But these things tend to add up, and when half the time spent working on the project brings nothing useful, or wastes more time than it saves down the road, or is outright useless and could have been replaced by a more appropriate third party technology, another programming technique, or a different methodology that took far less time to implement. And it goes beyond that: you had a bug, but you have absolutely no idea where it came from. The server you wrote just happens to randomly crash after 24 to 36 hours of running, so you can't sell it to anyone expecting six-nines, and you'd never suspect that the cause of the problem was some funky MySQL table character encoding option that brought the entire server down.

This is why using a sledgehammer to convey points can be an excellent idea. If you're an experienced programmer, and you have seen a particular thing lead to massive wastes of time through lack of expressiveness, improper choices for a given problem, long debugging sessions or lack of maintainability, and you know that these issues might not be obvious ("I won't have to write that much code", "I don't make mistakes so I don't need std::string", "everyone uses C++, so I should learn it first") then you might be compelled to perform a paradigm shift.

Consider the average beginner here. The average beginner has heard two pieces of truth: 1° most games seen in retail stores are programmed in C++ and 2° you have to learn a programming language to be a programmer. From which they deduce that 3° they must learn C++ as a first language. The question of whether C++ as a first language is or isn't a good choice for a first language is not the point of this thread, so I won't take a stance on it. However, the reasoning which deduces 3° from 1° and 2° is incorrect because beginners assume that learning an average programming language is a hard, decade-long process (which certainly isn't the case) and don't know that a programmer who knows a single programming language is less flexible in terms of employment, and can often be less competent than a programmer who studied that language for a shorter time, but knows three other languages.

Then, there's the priority shift. A lot of beginners tend to rely on recipes because they're not yet experienced enough to think on their own (not that it's a problem—remember that you need to be kicked around a few times before you can predict things without trying them out) and so they might spend too much time thinking about a particular issue (performance of virtual functions, performance of std::string versus C strings, performance of C++ versus C#) and restrict their thinking to that issue instead of concentrating on issues that are more relevant (getting three ArmorGames-worthy titles done every year, versus a failed FPS project and a boring MMORPG that only supports ten players at once and has to be rebooted daily). It can be a good idea to pick these people up and tell them that they're wasting their time worrying about a detail that just doesn't matter.

Imagine a builder from XVIth century Morrocco traveling in time and being told to work on a modern building. He'd work as he always did, paying utmost attention to every thumbnail-sized tile of porcelain he would stick to every wall in the underground parking lot of the building, even in those areas where nobody will ever care about the tiles completing delicate and intricate arabesques. You only have about 700000 hours in your life. A third of that is spent sleeping, another fourth is spent being young/stupid/uneducated/married. How many of these 350000 hours are you going to spend writing yet another C-string function or paving an underground parking lot with one-inch tiles?



Some people need to get their intermediary priorities straight for their own good. Nobody will say anything if your main priority is carving bonsai trees out of earwax, but if your main priority is carving bonsai trees then it's legitimate to insist that earwax might be a less appropriate material than clay or beewax for many reasons. The problem is that when people want to carve a bonsai tree, they might decide for obscure reasons that the best way to do so is to use earwax, and ask the gurus, "how can I get my ears to produce more earwax", to which the unwise apprentice would answer "stick sand into your ear" and the wise guru would stay "use clay or beewax instead". Replace "carving bonsai trees" with "writing a string-manipulation function", "earwax" with "C string functions" and "clay or beewax" with "std::string", and you'll notice a striking similarity to discussions on this forum.

Well, hope this helped you clarify your earwax problem [smile]

[Edited by - ToohrVyk on January 6, 2009 9:25:52 AM]