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I especially hate having to be so defensive. E.g. in phrasing my question, specifically having to mention a whole bunch of things that obviously aren't the pro

by michh 12y ago

I especially hate having to be so defensive. E.g. in phrasing my question, specifically having to mention a whole bunch of things that obviously aren't the problem but people are going to insist on anyway unless I've already mentioned them myself. Or the whole "Well, you shouldn't be doing this in the first place so I'm not going to help you with your actual problem". It can be incredibly helpful to point this out. But often I'm doing things in a certain way for a reason (constraints that aren't relevant for the question, like "yeah but our entire codebase"). So when I say I'm doing it this way for a reason and looking for a way to make it work, either trust my judgment or decide I don't deserve to be helped and stop commenting. But it often ends up being a massive distracting derail preventing others from trying to answer the question I was actually asking in the first place. Most annoyingly, this behaviour is often rewarded with upvotes. For example: > "I can't connect to my database due to error 110, I have no idea what that means" "Why aren't you using an ORM?" > "I have good reason not to, besides, I'm just looking to fix error 110 now" "But a good ORM handles these types of errors for you, it'd be stupid not to use it" > "You're probably right, but that'd require a lot of rewriting and refactoring and that's simply not an option right now" "Ok, get back to me when you're actually using an ORM and still having trouble with your database" when all I'm looking for is "That's a connection timeout, tried checking your firewall configuration?"

jfc 12y ago
>So when I say I'm doing it this way for a reason and looking for a way to make it work, either trust my judgment or decide I don't deserve to be helped and stop commenting. ...Most annoyingly, this behaviour is often rewarded with upvotes. Totally agree with this. I can't stand it when people start mucking about in the comments. It's almost as if they are looking for something to do, and then feed off of each other. Eventually, all the activity draws the attention of a super-zealot, who promptly closes the question.
dictum 12y ago
>Or the whole "Well, you shouldn't be doing this in the first place so I'm not going to help you with your actual problem". I call it the MacRumors Forums/Apple Discussions syndrome: "Why would you WANT to hold your iPhone this way?" "What kind of moron would want to keep using their 5-year old Mac?" "Why are you trying to export this file? Just create a copy by hand, duh." "No, this can't be done. Terminal? No, don't use it. Here be dragons."
- bruceboughton 12y ago
  OT but my 7-year-old entryish-level iMac is still going strong running Mavericks.
stelonix 12y ago
I couldn't agree more. I've gone on and on endless rants on how people in the computer science/software engineering field (including but not limited to SO users) usually avoid "unusual" questions by asking what is it exactly you're trying to do, instead of being objective and answering. When I've decided to post on SO, it means I've failed miserably at finding a solution on the internet and it's usually a very unusual question. I'm sure there's a nice design pattern I could be using or there's a different, more standard way to do it, but I do not post on SO as a newbie in the field (or at least I avoid such questions). My solution to avoid that kind of answer is to open my post giving all the reasons why I'm not doing it the usual way (for example, why I'm using plain WINAPI instead of MFC, .NET or whatever newer technology is out there). I still get suggestions I'm doing The Wrong Thing ™[0] though. [0]: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9199542/disabling-visual-styles-in-manifest-while-retaining-common-controls-functionalit#comment11591539_9199542 https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9199542/disabling-visual... EDIT: After posting this, the comment linked in [0] seems to be removed, but it was something along the lines of "Any reason you want your app to look old? :)"
- ryandrake 12y ago
  "What are you trying to do?" is probably the most passive-aggressive, most infuriating and least helpful answer to any technical question. It usually translates to "I know the answer to your question, but instead of just answering it and letting us both get on with our lives, I'd like to show off my vast intellect by helping you embark on a major re-design that you neither asked for nor need at the moment."
  - chc 12y ago
    I ask questions like this a lot, and that is not at all what it's about. The motivation for asking what somebody is trying to do is that I don't know a good answer to the question they asked, but I have a nagging feeling that their question might actually be reducible to a different question that I can answer easily. It would be presumptuous to just answer a completely different question, though, so I ask for clarification whether this is in fact the context that it looks like. To put it another way, they're asking "How do I hit glass with stone without breaking it?" but what they actually want to know is "How do I get the lid off a beer bottle?" The fact that they currently believe removing a beer lid involves striking the bottle with a rock doesn't necessarily mean that answers along those lines are the most helpful. But I can't be sure when I see that question whether they are thinking about a beer bottle. For example, yesterday a guy asked a rather complicated question about hacking the Objective-C runtime to replace a class in the inheritance tree. But from his question, I was able to infer that what he actually wanted to do was globally change a class's behavior. So I answered the question that I read between the lines. His response was, "Oh, yeah, I don't know why I didn't do that to begin with." In that case I felt sure enough to answer without asking, but in other cases I'm not as confident whether this is actually a different question in disguise.
mkartic 12y ago
Its like how you're asked to restart your computer everytime you call the support with an issue.
- kefka 12y ago
  I work in tech support, and I consider it bad taste to have user's reboot their machine without due reason. Then again, I'm a linux guy too, so reboots are in general bad tatse.
theycallmemorty 12y ago
The worst is "Tell your boss that the way you're doing it is wrong and you should use an ORM"

by michh 12y ago

jfc 12y ago

>So when I say I'm doing it this way for a reason and looking for a way to make it work, either trust my judgment or decide I don't deserve to be helped and stop commenting. ...Most annoyingly, this behaviour is often rewarded with upvotes. Totally agree with this. I can't stand it when people start mucking about in the comments. It's almost as if they are looking for something to do, and then feed off of each other. Eventually, all the activity draws the attention of a super-zealot, who promptly closes the question.

dictum 12y ago

>Or the whole "Well, you shouldn't be doing this in the first place so I'm not going to help you with your actual problem". I call it the MacRumors Forums/Apple Discussions syndrome: "Why would you WANT to hold your iPhone this way?" "What kind of moron would want to keep using their 5-year old Mac?" "Why are you trying to export this file? Just create a copy by hand, duh." "No, this can't be done. Terminal? No, don't use it. Here be dragons."

bruceboughton 12y ago
OT but my 7-year-old entryish-level iMac is still going strong running Mavericks.

stelonix 12y ago

I couldn't agree more. I've gone on and on endless rants on how people in the computer science/software engineering field (including but not limited to SO users) usually avoid "unusual" questions by asking what is it exactly you're trying to do, instead of being objective and answering. When I've decided to post on SO, it means I've failed miserably at finding a solution on the internet and it's usually a very unusual question. I'm sure there's a nice design pattern I could be using or there's a different, more standard way to do it, but I do not post on SO as a newbie in the field (or at least I avoid such questions). My solution to avoid that kind of answer is to open my post giving all the reasons why I'm not doing it the usual way (for example, why I'm using plain WINAPI instead of MFC, .NET or whatever newer technology is out there). I still get suggestions I'm doing The Wrong Thing ™[0] though. [0]: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9199542/disabling-visual-styles-in-manifest-while-retaining-common-controls-functionalit#comment11591539_9199542 https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9199542/disabling-visual... EDIT: After posting this, the comment linked in [0] seems to be removed, but it was something along the lines of "Any reason you want your app to look old? :)"

ryandrake 12y ago
"What are you trying to do?" is probably the most passive-aggressive, most infuriating and least helpful answer to any technical question. It usually translates to "I know the answer to your question, but instead of just answering it and letting us both get on with our lives, I'd like to show off my vast intellect by helping you embark on a major re-design that you neither asked for nor need at the moment."
- chc 12y ago
  I ask questions like this a lot, and that is not at all what it's about. The motivation for asking what somebody is trying to do is that I don't know a good answer to the question they asked, but I have a nagging feeling that their question might actually be reducible to a different question that I can answer easily. It would be presumptuous to just answer a completely different question, though, so I ask for clarification whether this is in fact the context that it looks like. To put it another way, they're asking "How do I hit glass with stone without breaking it?" but what they actually want to know is "How do I get the lid off a beer bottle?" The fact that they currently believe removing a beer lid involves striking the bottle with a rock doesn't necessarily mean that answers along those lines are the most helpful. But I can't be sure when I see that question whether they are thinking about a beer bottle. For example, yesterday a guy asked a rather complicated question about hacking the Objective-C runtime to replace a class in the inheritance tree. But from his question, I was able to infer that what he actually wanted to do was globally change a class's behavior. So I answered the question that I read between the lines. His response was, "Oh, yeah, I don't know why I didn't do that to begin with." In that case I felt sure enough to answer without asking, but in other cases I'm not as confident whether this is actually a different question in disguise.

mkartic 12y ago

Its like how you're asked to restart your computer everytime you call the support with an issue.

kefka 12y ago
I work in tech support, and I consider it bad taste to have user's reboot their machine without due reason. Then again, I'm a linux guy too, so reboots are in general bad tatse.

theycallmemorty 12y ago

The worst is "Tell your boss that the way you're doing it is wrong and you should use an ORM"