RE: [PHP] FAQ

Ye 2001-03-15 20:11 -0800, Jason Lotito skribis: (someone) > > How many times are people going to complain about no-brainer questions > > being posted to the list. The fact of the matter is people are going to > > post things on the list without reading the manual or the FAQ. It goes > > with the territory. It annoys me too, but there is no good solution for > > the problem. There is the fact that a lot of people are new and don't There is a single solution. Instantly delete the message. If you want to flame lamers and delete all followups, that is fine, too. What is not fine is to let the response become itself a subject of discussion. (All this is IMHO). > > really know where to go to find answers. Even if they go to the web site, > > they still may not know that they need to be looking for information on > > naming variables with variables or that fopen opens a file or whatever. That is why it is preferable to simply delete rather than flame. But if they evidently have made nil effort they probably should attract flames. It is not your job to educate people who are nowhere near ready to understand the matter but are simply attracted to what is newsy, or reputed to be profitable. I recently saw a message from a "Linux Systems Engineer" who had upgraded to the Linux 2.4.2 kernel without a clue about the need to upgrade other software and instead was pleading to the wide world to help him, although the "Changes" file has been in the Linux kernel distribution for years. Don't help idiot imposters. There are certain things that people need help on. Typically they are cases where the development has outrun the documentation, or the documentation is very bad, written by and for those who already know the answers. If you have worked out the solution to the problem, please share it. But there is an assumption that you have some kind of obligation to help lamers, that that is what mailing lists and newsgroups are for. It is totally false. > > > > K E I T H V A N C E > > I think the argument has less to do with people asking questions about PHP > and how it works, and more about people asking basica programming questions > without knowing it. Fundamental programming concepts, like the scope of a > variable, passing by reference or by value, or even looping are things > newbie's simply do not understand. Why? Because they don't know they need > to learn the concepts and theories of programming before learning to > program. It sounds odd, but that is the way it is. > > People asking questions about how a loop works are not usually asking how a > PHP loop works. The same for arrays. They are really saying: "This is the > first real programming language I am out to learn, and I don't understand > the concept behind a For/Next Loop." This isn't a bad thing, heck, we were > all newbies at one point, and in a sense, we are all newbies at something. But we don't decide to waste the time and resources of everyone else to save ourselves the effort of looking into the matter. It is not good enough to say, I am a newbie, and therefore I have the right to waste the time and resources of others, because they were newbies once or are newbies about something. If it is not in the PHP documentation because it is not PHP-specific, ignore the question. If it IS in the PHP documentation, ignore the question. It is definitely a bad thing, strategically destructive of the utility of mailing lists and newsgroups, which over the last five years has caused observable degradation of the Internet culture, to help such lamers. It is definitely a bad thing to help out people who have never entered the computer section of a bookshop, are not interested in computer programming but want to set up commercial PHP sites. It is definitely a bad thing to help out people who cannot learn without a helper and so ask passers-by to, for no fee, teach them highly technical matters, who think you are there waiting to be made a convenience of, that asking questions of strangers on line is a complete substitute for studying the matter. It is a long time since I saw a response saying simply, "RTFM". I should be seeing it much, much, much more. If I ask a question on line and am ignored, I usually continue to study the matter, and sometimes become embarrassed about having asked such a dumb question. It is actually positively helpful to fail to answer questions. Probably, conversely, if is positively unhelpful to answer questions where the documentation is reasonable, as it certainly is re the separate PHP statements. You are not doing people a favor by becoming their crutch. > I think the argument is that their are many people who don't want to learn > how and why a For/Next Loop works, but instead simply want someone to fix > the problem for them. That isn't programming. Programming (and yes, I Yes. > know, PHP is technically a scripting language, but lets not jump that fence > as well) is about trial and error, logic, and creativity, but most > importantly, problem solving. Most of the newbies get into PHP expecting a > tutorial on every topic. If they can't find a tutorial on how to print out > 5 numbers, they expect someone to show them how to do it. They don't try > and solve the problem themselves, and that is a problem. I don't mind Yes. > assisting where I can, however, I don't like rewriting a script for someone > when they don't even take the time to try and learn the fundamentals. Most Yes. > newbies I have met fall into two categories. The majority start out wanting > to learn PHP because someone said it was easy to learn, which it is, from a > programmers point of view. However, when in the second week of learning > their first programming language they can't program that PHP Database > Content Management System with Instant Yahoo News Retrival complete with > User Database, Forums, and Real Time Foo, they start getting upset and say > that PHP sucks. Those same people may also complain because they can't find > a tutorial on how to create a Forum Database, and all they can find are > tutorials on the basics of Database Design. Yes. Well put. > I think this is the real problem. Only if you turn it into a problem. Ignore them. Michael Talbot-Wilson