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I was extremely lucky and stumbled across a particular IRC channel where some kind souls took pity on me and patiently answered my questions and gave me advice.

I was extremely lucky and stumbled across a particular IRC channel where some kind souls took pity on me and patiently answered my questions and gave me advice. I think it's fairly likely I wouldn't be a professional programmer today if I hadn't found that channel / those people. For me at least, there was a certain level of aptitude I needed before I was able to productively seek out knowledge on my own. The range of possible things-to-learn in the programming world is so vast and daunting that I needed some hand-holding at the outset, until I had enough knowledge to reasonably separate things I needed/wanted to learn about from things I could confidently disregard. If I were learning from scratch today, I think it's fairly likely I would still need something similar, even with the existence of SO.

zachrose 9y ago
Similar for me. When I had near zero programming experience I picked out a boutique PHP CMS to build a relatively fancy blog. The CMS author was up on IRC for hours helping me shoehorn my rediculous project into his CMS and patiently explaining some very basic programming concepts to me. Alex Suraci If you're reading this, thank you.
iliketosleep 9y ago
This really brings back memories. During my first year of programming there were occasions when I was absolutely desperate for help. A friend introduced me to some programming channels on IRC, and I was amazed at how knowledgeable and helpful those guys were. Stackoverflow definitely saves a lot of time, but it doesn't compare to the personalized help from those gurus on IRC. Unfortunately, much harder to find these days.