[ishkabible]

I think we're more geared toward beginners actually, that's just my humble opinion however.

I think one of the primary things you get with DIC is the ability to learn the right way to do things. Learning via tutorials and such only allows you a narrow view into what you can do with a language for your project; with DIC you get insight from people with more experience on how to do what your doing. It goes beyond anything a tutorial or book could anticipate becuase the insight is tailored to your situation. It even goes beyond the class as we are not simply trying to help you get though your assignment but trying to help you learn, hopefully more than you otherwise would've.

This post has been edited by ishkabible: 06 December 2012 - 09:00 AM

[modi123_1]

Side note - I always took it that this site was more beginner friendly - almost to a fault. Maybe I had a skewed perception or this has changed over the years, but outside of shaking off the cruft of the leeches (and those just trying to gimp by in their classes) learning and help happens.

What's that they say about teamwork? A few innocent snowflakes working together make an avalanche?

[jon.kiparsky]

codechikk, what you have to understand is that everyone here who can help you sort out your problems, while we're all different in a lot of ways, has two things in common.

First, we're here because for whatever reason we actually want to help you out. We enjoy it and we learn from it - there's nobody here to show off how much they know, because frankly nobody's watching. This is one of the things that makes this site a great resource.

Second, because we are the people who can help you out, we're mostly in demand all the time. Either someone else wants our help, or our employer would like to see us do some work once in a while, or we have something we're working on for our own jollies.

By point 1, we want to answer as many questions as we can, as well as we can. By point 2, we have serious constraints on how much of that we can do. The more you do to help us help you, the better response you're going to get.

This post has been edited by jon.kiparsky: 06 December 2012 - 08:59 AM

[BenignDesign]

modi123_1, on 06 December 2012 - 10:57 AM, said:

What's that they say about teamwork? A few innocent snowflakes working together make an avalanche?

I haven't been called "innocent" in a LONG time. Now I feel like a special snowflake, too!

[macosxnerd101]

I want to add a point as well. It's very frustrating trying to help someone when they won't give you a clear description of what is going on, what is supposed to happen, and how the current result is wrong. The more I have to coax someone to post their problems, the less willing I am to spend another minute of my day helping.

Sometimes as well threads just happen to go unanswered. Maybe a member didn't have time to come back to it, or even visit it at all. Maybe the OP wasn't providing enough detail, or just stopped responding. It happens once in a while. For the most part, I see that for the most part as members put in effort and try to ask good questions, then they receive quality help in return.

Honestly, the forum isn't geared towards advanced users. We hardly get significantly advanced questions. Many of those that we do get are highly specialized in fields or libraries in which most of us haven't had any experience. Most of the questions we do get are from people in their first two semesters of programming classes at the high school or college level.

Just my $0.02.

[nunc]

I was a beginner a year ago. Still am in some aspects. I felt very welcomed here, and I got a lot of assistance. The threads that don't get much assistance are those that are unclear with what their problem is, or the ones that need to debugging experience, not professional experience.

Just remember that the new programmers here most likely won't be able to help you out with what you need, and the professionals might not have the time to step through 200 lines of code to find your logic error. If you don't get help, try working it out on your own. We've all had to do it before. I'm sure you'll be able to figure it out. If somebody can help you out, just be appreciative man.

[trevster344]

I think the most useful tip I ever received was "Take a break" lol. Seriously sometimes you can take an hour or two break, come back, and spot a problem immediately. If I don't have the time to take an hour or two break though I just comment out all of my code for the particular feature or program that is giving me trouble, and try to rewrite it. Rewriting it is much clearer to me than just reading it, and often it solves the problem immediately but specifically for when my brain is fried.

[macosxnerd101]

Just got this response in the Meet Your Forum Leaders thread for Java:
http://www.dreaminco...0&#entry1762301

Quote

ok, so I do not know where to put this so I put it here in hopes that the right people read this:

I want to thank the experts of this board. In my 10+ years of programming (Mostly in Perl) I have been to alot of help forums and for the most part i get discouraged because the experts on the sites seem to get mad when you ask quesstions and treat the newbs like they are beneath them, here does not seem to be the case, with the questions I have asked and by reading other posts to see what I can learn I see time after time, the people in the know showing excellent people skills and helping without belittling (sp??) the newbs.

I want you all to know that your curtousy is greatly appreciated and not overlooked by us that are learning.

So a heart felt THANK YOU is in order, and some day, hopefully when I get knowledgable enough to be able to help I will in turn be, as you all are, curtous and respectful.

Now if I could just learn to spell.. lol

Sincerly,
Randor (Bob)

[Sergio Tapia]

Oh man, I think this topic is going to strike a nerve!

I have to be honest, when I first joined this site I did feel it was more warm and welcoming. I remember having a problem with a Bingo game during my first year of university and Baavgai came down in a white unicorn and helped me complete it using advanced topics. I learned so much that year from volunteers here.

Last year, Tilq helped me the same way with an even harder problem. I'm talking he created a visual studio solution and wrote up the entire example, just so I could learn.

Sometimes as volunteers, we get a bit fed up and tired, I guess is the word. I haven't helped out in the C# forum for a long time because I just see Windows forms question and I zone-out. I am burned out.

We as regulars on DIC should try to be a bit more succinct in the help we give. Help first and foremost, suggest supplemental reading second. Just my two cents.

[AthenaDX]

I wouldn't exactly call myself a beginner, but this site has been one of my best tools with increasing my knowledge in my main languages, the .net ones, and helps me with the one I'm curently learning on my own time, Java and C/C++.

As for helping folks, half the time I can't make it to a question on C# or VB without someone else having answered it already. I don't like posting more stuff if I see an good answer already there anyways. I think this site is just fine the way it is.

In other news, ohmahgawd, were tlhIn`toq's tuturials helpful. o.o I should probably gander at some other folk's as well.

[jon.kiparsky]

Athena, one place that you could really help out is to keep an eye on those topics - sometimes one person will have a correct answer, but they just don't connect with the person asking the question. If you see that happening, it can be a great help if you offer the same answer from a different perspective.
It's especially handy to have someone new taking the questions on, since a lot of us have seen some of these questions over and over, and it's easy to forget that this is the first time Bobby Beginner has tried to do this.

[BetaWar]

When I came here I was a novice (not a beginner per-say, but definitely not great either). I found the forums extremely helpful and educational, I just had to show my work. That was fine with me since I didn't believe in using any 3rd party libraries, so everything I was working on was mine in full. I also was learning on my own, so I didn't have any strict requirements, just tried to get things working. snoj was extremely helpful (back then he was called hotsnoj) in the PHP forum.

I believe that we are more than adequately helpful for new members and beginners alike, they just need to follow the rules and they won't have a problem. Things get annoying when we just have help vampires or people constantly asking us to post the code of how we would solve their problem. We don't and won't do your homework for you, it is as simple as that.

[Martyr2]

I have to say it speaks volumes when a thread geared towards beginners is bombarded by the mods/mentors/regular helpers trying to justify their positions. I think it is a sign of how much pressure all the regular helpers are under these days.

I think it is a little unfair to have a handful of us who support thousands of newbies. At any given time you can find less than about 90 members online with like 4-6k guests. Not very solid.

But we do our best.

P.S. It also doesn't help us when the board has so many bugs in it that at times it even helps stop us from helping further. Anyone who has run into the "Fast reply" bug not saving an answer can speak to.

This post has been edited by Martyr2: 06 December 2012 - 08:12 PM

[raghav.naganathan]

Well, one thing you need to note here...the questions asked in the GMTC section are simply too vague and don't seem to have any effort put from the poster's end. The bottom line is...they want the best marks as they do it for a school assignment and they even state the most well known sentence.

"The deadline is today midnight..."...or something like that.

Sometimes I have seen that the questions asked in this section just need a few minutes of basic understanding of the concepts and sometimes, I feel too tempted to write the code for them but then I decide against it for the following reason.

The person will take the code, give it to the teacher and get 100% marks...but what he will lose is the joy and happiness of solving the problem on one's own effort...and in the process, when he goes to a professional environment, will suffer big time...and in the end...will turn out to be a bad programmer.

Now, as for the other posts which have a considerable effort put in, we all are willing to help out...even if we are busy...as we know that that person deserves some help as he/she has taken that effort in understanding the concept and asking specific questions...needless to say, 100 people will help the person out with excellent suggestions.In that way, the person will feel more inclined to do the corrections/changes and in the end...will be able to solve the problem on his own.

regards,
Raghav

regards,
Raghav

[macosxnerd101]

Quote

P.S. It also doesn't help us when the board has so many bugs in it that at times it even helps stop us from helping further. Anyone who has run into the "Fast reply" bug not saving an answer can speak to.

An upgrade is in the works, and we're long overdue for one. Hopefully it resolves a lot of the errors, many of which are the result of the IPB software. I wish I had an ETA, though.