Face palms
Just out of curiosity, when you guys are looking over a code or a sniplet in the beginners section looking for advice, how many times a day do you do a "face palm" or force yourself to stop laughing at the coding and breathe before you answer? Do you ever feel like "If I answer one more question on this topic I'll scream!"?
Or do you just enjoy it so much it doesn't matter?
Or do you just enjoy it so much it doesn't matter?
Considering it is the beginners sections I do not face palm nor laugh. That would just discourage people from a field they may enjoy. You don't just wake up one day with all the knowledge in the world you have to start from somewhere. If someone needs more help than others why laugh when you can just help them. We all were in their shoes at one time and how would you feel if they laughed at you?
I facepalm a lot. But it doesn't stop me from writing a reply. The screaming part... yeah, often, but I've learned to close the forum and relax on other websites. Never laughed for a serious question. Maybe for some clearly incorrect answers.
When I say laugh, I mean you look at their code chuckle and think "What the hell is this"? or think "This is the crappiest logic I've ever seen"... Beginners do that to ya... But to answer your question, when someone laughs at me, it makes me feel as if I need to tighten up, try and think things through a little more logically... Not use 10 variables when I can use a loop or something... I seldom get offended. :)
I can generally tell what it is someone is not grasping properly. I generally respond when I know I can easily explain it to them so they get a better understanding. Unfortunately, not all things are easy for me to explain, and some things I personally hate explaining, so there are topics where I don't help just because I'm not good at explaining or don't like explaining.
Sometimes I can link to existing articles that do a good job of explaining, but other times there aren't good articles because you need to view 10+ search results to understand something. I often just tell people to search "why using namespace std is bad" just because it's easier than explaining or picking a specific article. Not all articles are created equal.
I feel bad for not helping people just because I'm not good at explaining things, so it's more of a face-palm for myself. Not the hard-smack kind, but the soft, depressed kind.
Sometimes I can link to existing articles that do a good job of explaining, but other times there aren't good articles because you need to view 10+ search results to understand something. I often just tell people to search "why using namespace std is bad" just because it's easier than explaining or picking a specific article. Not all articles are created equal.
I feel bad for not helping people just because I'm not good at explaining things, so it's more of a face-palm for myself. Not the hard-smack kind, but the soft, depressed kind.
I facepalm when I see bad indentation and bad variable names. If one writes code this way, it is much more burdensome on the mind trying to examine the program. Anyone just learning to program is likely to have an overburdened mind as it is. Why make it harder on yourself?
I never face-palm from reading code, like giblet and LB said, people come here to learn. On the other hand some of the responses I read are just inexplicable.
Like last week, there was a guy in IRC who wanted to know how something like Process Explorer listed the DLL files in a process. I told them what I thought, that they used "CreateToolhelp32Snapshot()". His response was that he didn't want to use that function because it was slower then the debug method he was currently using, the one that didn't work mind you. When I asked him how much slower it was, my first thought being that he just had a weird loop structure or something, he responded with "I don't know, I haven't tried it yet.". Not that he hadn't compared the two methods, he had not tried the function that was designed to do exactly what he wanted to accomplish at all. That is the kind of thing that gets me because it's not due to a lack of experience or knowledge with the language. It's due to a critical flaw in the way a person thinks. Yes, "CreateToolhelp32Snapshot()" will more then likely use a few more CPU cycles in it's execution then some other method. But that difference is not something that a human being can perceive, and certainly not something that will make a difference in their ability to process the results.
Like last week, there was a guy in IRC who wanted to know how something like Process Explorer listed the DLL files in a process. I told them what I thought, that they used "CreateToolhelp32Snapshot()". His response was that he didn't want to use that function because it was slower then the debug method he was currently using, the one that didn't work mind you. When I asked him how much slower it was, my first thought being that he just had a weird loop structure or something, he responded with "I don't know, I haven't tried it yet.". Not that he hadn't compared the two methods, he had not tried the function that was designed to do exactly what he wanted to accomplish at all. That is the kind of thing that gets me because it's not due to a lack of experience or knowledge with the language. It's due to a critical flaw in the way a person thinks. Yes, "CreateToolhelp32Snapshot()" will more then likely use a few more CPU cycles in it's execution then some other method. But that difference is not something that a human being can perceive, and certainly not something that will make a difference in their ability to process the results.
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