[codechikk]

I feel like this forum is geared toward advanced users. I understand that, but a lot of beginner users are looking for a nice friendly place to network, share ideas,receive help and pass it along, and have a good experience. Unfortunately I do not feel that way here a lot. Not because of how I have been treated, but the way I see people being treated.
Beginners are going to be vague, and if they are asking about multiplying Textboxes, then Sub routines and Functions are not going to do anything but confuse them, I see that stuff all the time, I just learned abut subs and functions, 14 weeks into my Intro class.
I will admit, I do see people saying """I need a Form that does x, and then y, multiplies that by z, z^2 up to z^1784657 and puts each answer into an array, and then split the array into an 2 alphabetical lists output each line to a textbox, only one per form, then output that answer divided by 2 in a message box.OH YEAH!!! It can't do a, if b is true, and it cant do c if d is true. Thanks ahead of time I need it by Monday."""
There is a difference between them and the person saying they tried all they know how to do and are frustrated. Giving a line or two of code to help someone get on pace isn't going to kill you in your sleep, or will it?
Most of the time it's just a word flipped around. newb learned something to pass on as they build up knowledge

This post has been edited by codechikk: 06 December 2012 - 12:52 AM

[darek9576]

Is there a service that people here are providing? Who said that your question will ever be solved?
All coming from a guy who is a member for less than a month.

Man up.

[rgfirefly24]

We do try and help beginners here, but we also ask that you try and help yourself too. If you stick around for a year or so you'll understand that 99% of the time the posts we get are from people who run into a wall then immediately post for help with out trying to fix it themselves. I would suggest that if you want to enhance your experience to not only post your code and your question, but also post what steps you have taken to try and fix the problem. Also post what output your getting and what you are expecting.

For you specifically I would suggest that you look at the debugging tutorials that are posted here and learn about breakpoints. One of the best ways to understand what your code is doing is to watch it work line by line. I'll update this post when I find the links to the debugging stuff.

Here are a few helpful links:

How to get results from google

Debugging in VB.net

This post has been edited by rgfirefly24: 06 December 2012 - 06:40 AM

[JackOfAllTrades]

Quote

For you specifically I would suggest that you look at the debugging tutorials that are posted here and learn about breakpoints. One of the best ways to understand what your code is doing is to watch it work line by line.

Best. Advice. Ever. For EVERYONE. I wish I could +1,000,000 that.

[DarenR]

Codechikk,
This forum is geared toward all levels. The best way to get help is by showing some work--- saying Gimme da Codez will get you nothing. If you show effort others will flock to help.

dont forget to use code tags and ask questions.

[BenignDesign]

We are a community of volunteers. The work we do here is a labor of love. We love coding. We love helping. We love watching those who are willing to help themselves grow from a newbie student to a competent programmer.

But sometimes patience runs thin... and sometimes we're short on time for formulating a happy, snuggly, lovey-dovey, leave you feeling like rainbows and sunshine answer. Most of our regulars have full-time jobs - some have multiple jobs - and families and class schedules and lives to live outside the boards. We are here to help people learn, not to coddle and stroke egos.

[no2pencil]

Just to add to what the others have stated, (except darek9576), when someone knows a programming language at a moderate or advanced level, & are trying to assist a beginner, be it by pointing out flaws in logic, or trying to assist them with making their program better on any number of levels, it can be confusing to the beginner. But the question then becomes, which is better? To teach a beginner in a flawed, but easy to understand mannor, or explain to them that they way they are attacking the problem is wrong, & offer advice towards the more correct, more efficient answer?

The main reason I bring this is up is because very very often a beginner will want a simple solution to a situation that requires an advanced one. They want something that they can understand for something that they can't understand what it takes to perform that task.

Situations like "I want a simple 3d game engine", or even the other day someone wanted to code their own dns server, but they wanted it to be kept simple. Some things just can not be completed at a beginner level.

[tlhIn`toq]

Quote

Beginners are going to be vague, and if they are asking about multiplying Textboxes, then Sub routines and Functions are not going to do anything but confuse them

You have to understand DIC does not exist to be an extension of your school. We are not here to augment the shortcomings of your class/professor/textbook.

There are countless schools out there, using numerous books, plus many good "learn {language} in 30 days" books, and on-line tutorials. We have no idea what anyone's background is, what they have or have not learned, what they are and are not allowed to use in their homework, or what is going to be familiar terminology and what is going to confuse them.

Any terms we use that confuses you or someone else can easily be looked up in a dictionary, which in todays' world is wikipedia.com

It is unrealistic to expect that our 50 core members can treat every question asked by 500,000 members as if we are giving a 1 hour lecture and explain every term in slow and simple ways. We simply can't provide links to definitions for every word used, in every post written.

We often remind students that they aren't bound by law to only use the course textbook. Nothing is stopping them from buying a couple "Learn {language} in 30 days" books. Nothing is stopping them from working through on-line tutorials or at the very least researching the topic they are on. By honestly, 90% of the students come here asking "Teach me about arrays" when there are 5,000 tutorials already out there on arrays. We try to not say "Are you really too lazy to google?" but the number of them to the number of us makes it hard to remain pleasant about it over, and over, and over, and over, and over. And frankly, anyone that lazy is not someone I want to help get into this industry that I work in. I don't want to pollute my own career field with people that have no work ethic, no research skills and no desire to try, but instead act like its all supposed to be handed to them.

Quote

I feel like this forum is geared toward advanced users.

Then maybe you should look around a little more. We wouldn't have entire learning series of tutorials for new students if we were only geared for advanced users. Read through the last month's questions in the C# area and tell me that advanced users are asking about how to build hangman games.

I am not the only member here whose blog is filled with articles aimed specifically at new coders.
Homework planning
Multiple choice quiz assignment
Be realistic about your degree

I know I'm also not the only user that frequently gives tips written specfically for the new coder:

Spoiler

Some of my common tips (some may apply more than others to your specific style):

• You have to program as if everything breaks, nothing works, the cyberworld is not perfect, the attached hardware is flakey, the network is slow and unreliable, the harddrive is about to fail, every method will return an error and every user will do their best to break your software. Confirm everything. Range check every value. Make no assumptions or presumptions.
  
  
• Take the extra 3 seconds to rename your controls each time you drag them onto a form. The default names of button1, button2... button54 aren't very helpful. If you rename them right away to something like btnOk, btnCancel, btnSend etc. it helps tremendously when you make the methods for them because they are named after the button by the designer.btnSend_Click(object sender, eventargs e) is a lot easier to maintain than button1_click(object sender, eventargs e)
  
  
• You aren't paying for variable names by the byte. So instead of variables names of a, b, c go ahead and use meaningful names like index, timeOut, row, column and so on. You should avoid 'T' for the timer. Amongst other things 'T' is commonly used throughout C# for Type and this will lead to problems. There are naming guidelines you should follow so your code confirms to industry standards. It makes life much easier on everyone around you, including those of us here to help. If you start using the standards from the beginning you don't have to retrain yourself later.
  You might want to look at some of the naming guidelines. Its a lot easier to start with good habits than to break bad habits later and re-learn.
  
  
  • Guidelines for names
    
  • Naming guidelines
    
  • Design guidelines for classes
  
  
  
• Try to avoid having work actually take place in GUI control event handlers. It is better to have the GUI handler call other methods so those methods can be reused and make the code more readable. This is also how you can send parameters rather than use excessive global variables. Get in this habit even if you are using WinForms because WPF works a lot under the idea of "commands" and this will get you working towards that. Think of each gester, control click, menu option etc. as a command to do something such as a command to SAVE. It doesn't matter where the command comes from, all sources should point at the same target to do the actual saving.
  
  Spoiler

  
  

  // All of this different triggering mechinisms call the same single [il]SavePreferences()[/il] method
  
  btnSave(object sender, eventargs e)
  {
      SavePreferences(preferencesPath);
  }
  
  <KeyboardShortcut control+s bound to save>
  <Touchscreen guesture swiping from lowerleft to upperright bound to save>
  
  SaveMenuItem(object sender, eventargs e)
  {
      SavePreferences(@"C:\prefs\test.txt");
  }
  
  SaveContextMenu(object sender, eventargs e)
  {
      SavePreferences();// No parameter method overload
  }
  
  FormMain_Closing(object sender, eventargs e)
  {
      if (IsDirty) SavePreferences();
  }
  

  
  
  
• Don't replace lines of code that don't work. Instead comment them out and put your new attempts below that. This will keep you from re-trying the same ideas over and over. Also, when you come back to us saying "I've tried this 100 different ways and still can't get it", we can actually see what you tried. So often a failed attempt is very very close and just needs a little nudge in the right direction. So if we can say "See what you did in attempt 3... blah blah" it helps a lot
  
  
  Spoiler

  // Try #1 - May 1, 0900hrs
  //    code
  //    code  
  //    code
  // Try #2 - May 2, 1700hrs   Okay, plan B.  What if I do it *this* way
  //    code
  //    code  
  //    code
  // Try #14 - May 3, 0500hrs after 5 cans of RedBull.  Maybe I should get some sleep. I can't think of anything else but this last idea
      code
      code  
      code
  
  

  
  If you are using Visual Studio you can select a block of lines and hit control+k control+c (Kode Comment) to comment it out. control+k control+u (Kode Uncomment) to uncomment a selected block.
  
  
  
• I strongly suggest installing VMware or some other virtualization technology on your development PC so you can create a couple virtual computers for testing. This would allow you to debug and test inside: WinXP32, XP64, Vista, Win7x32, Win7x64... etc. without having to actually have 5 physical PC's. Visual Studio will let you send the debug directly into one of these virtual machines so you can watch it operate, check its variables, see the crashes and so on just as if it were debugging on your real machine.
  
  
• This can't be stressed enough in today's world of cell phone messaging:
  Don't use txt/sms/leet/T9 speak like: u no, u r, dnt, wut i m do-n, coz, al gud, b4, ny1, sum1, please and so on like this guy:
  
  
  Spoiler

  dis not b d'hood dawg... You are sitting at a real keyboard with a real monitor, not a cell phone. You are not here texting your high school posse to come to your kegger after their shift at Taco Bell. You are here asking for help from senior coding professionals who graciously donate their valuable time to helping the next generation of coders with their chosen craft. Please try to show them, yourself and the industry some respect by writing at least at an eighth grade level. (IE: English not ebonics or SMS, real words, punctuation and so on). If you can't take your own problem/question seriously enough to write like an adult, then why would you expect anyone else to take it seriously?
  
  When you write a post you are presenting yourself. Your writing style is all you have to show others who you are and what you stand for. When I see posts filled with lack of capitalization, SMS text like 'Urself', lack of punctuation and so on; what I see is someone who just doesn't care to make even an eighth grade presentation of themselves. I also see that you feel we are not worth the effort. Posts that look like this show that you don't feel the person you are talking to is worth speaking to as an adult. If you show this level of contempt or apathy towards someone you are asking for help how can you expect to be taken seriously or expect to receive that expert's fullest attention and time to help you?

Our people wouldn't assemble long lists of resources for new users, compile FAQ lists with links and samples, and spend hours upon hours writing tutorials for new users if we only cared about advanced users. I feel you have a rather myopic view of the users here and the help they provide based on the responses to your specific questions and not all the questions we answer. That probably says more about your questions than our level of commitment to new users.

[BenignDesign]

tlhIn`toq, on 06 December 2012 - 09:35 AM, said:

I don't want to pollute my own career field with people that have no work ethic, no research skills and no desire to try, but instead act like its all supposed to be handed to them.

This. A million times this.

[cfoley]

Quote

I just learned abut subs and functions, 14 weeks into my Intro class.

Ouch. I don't know what the designers of that course had in mind but it seems almost criminal to let people program without subs and functions for that long.

Good programming involves breaking large problems into smaller problems. Subs and functions are the basic building blocks for doing just that and people only get good at it by practising. You want to be writing a dozen functions every day and you'll write hundreds before you get good at it.

Week 14 sounds like it's towards the end of a long semester and there won't be much time to practice those subs before a holiday. What have they had you doing all that time? Drawing GUIs with the mouse or lumping a huge wads of code together and calling it a program? The former doesn't teach you much you won't have picked up playing in MS Paint and the latter reinforces teaches you from the beginning some harmful habits that are very difficult to break later on.

Subs and Funcs aren't an advanced topic. If you don't learn about them in the first week, they should be top of the agenda on week 2. Whoever recommended using them for the problem you are referring to was offering some of the best advice you could have had.

[trevster344]

tlhIn`toq I agree with that man. We shouldn't dumb things down ridiculous amounts.

Here everyone is treated the same way despite their level of knowledge so long as they demonstrate it when they ask for help, or offer advice. If someone comes to me with a problem and says "It just doesn't work.." well I'm going to tell them the basic tips I've got for solving the problem which definitely involve debugging. It's not treating them badly or telling them that they are stupid in some way it's a reminder or a welcoming to the environment of a programmer in every day life. If someone comes to me and says they've tried these techniques of debugging but the issue still persists, and they provide a few additional details I can actually offer better advice because I may have run into the problem at some time or I might have a better and more efficient way of accomplishing the task. There are various members who have written life saving tutorials/articles on good practices of programming whether it's Java, C++, or one of the .Net family members. The beginners just need to use those resources and make an actual effort to learn it's not that difficult really. That being said I don't believe a beginner needs to be treated any different than anyone else.. They need to get used to this environment and learn how to adapt. If they don't, they won't make it far in the field. When I first joined here I was hesitant to post not because of any person(s) but because I knew I needed a lot of work. After a few times(10 or so times lol) of being told to do proper debugging I hardly ever needed anymore help. Why? I adapted. The advice became habit and habit of course made my programs far more efficient, and my problems naturally became just about non existent. At the beginning my job required that I learned Vb.NET and because of D.I.C., the people here, and the resources available I am quite efficient with the language now and can accomplish my job well. Learning languages is also way easier now.

[jon.kiparsky]

Eric Raymond has an essay called "How to Ask Questions The Smart Way". Read it and do that. It's worth the time.

[modi123_1]

I'm a fan of "what have you tried" linked in my profile's about page.

[cfoley]

Quote

Eric Raymond has an essay called "How to Ask Questions The Smart Way". Read it and do that. It's worth the time.

I really dislike that article. It addresses an important issue but it's way too condescending.

[lucky3]

6 minutes ago:

Spoiler

mahdir8, on 06 December 2012 - 04:46 PM, said:

Mr Luchy3
thanks alot
just please give me a full code
i do use from your guide so thank you again
i'm waiting

http://www.dreaminco...ost__p__1762238

Do I need to add something to this?