It’s because they’re stupid and mask their flaws by being rude so you don’t question their authority or intelligence.

I’m very sorry this happened to you. Please don’t let some assholes discourage you. It’s a great profession, and can be a lot of fun.

I think there’s a few different things worth addressing here, so please bear with me since this might be a long reply.

What you experienced here is, unfortunately, very common for anyone getting into tech. A lot of us can recall the first time reaching out somewhere for help and receiving a mixture of belittlement and vague answers as a response. I’d argue it’s probably one of the biggest issues we have in this space.

If I had to guess why tech forums are so vitriolic to newcomers, I’d say a lot of us simply forgot what it was like to be inexperienced. They forgot how daunting it is to want to learn, to run headfirst into a bunch of errors you barely understand, and then try navigating a sea of concepts and terminology that practically requires a dictionary of its own.

While the forums rarely get better (unfortunately), never let those people drive you away. It’s incredibly overwhelming at first, and there’s a lot of us who are long overdue for a slice of humble pie, but someday things will start to click and the things you want to do will start to come to life.

It’s late, I’m rambling, but you’ll your footing. When you do I hope you get the satisfaction of telling one of those assholes on the forums to shove it while giving another newcomer the welcome they need

It’s funny, right? These dudes will simultaneously decry new programmers relying on AI to teach them but then will also turn around and mock and troll new users like duh… I’d talk to the ai too!

RTFM

~(but seriously, best attempt is to post wrong code and claim it’s the best solution for a problem - you will be instantly corrected)~

Which forum lol?

Because it took 10, 20 years for them to start to know their ass from a hole in the ground. So they take all the pain of their learning experience and lob it back at you whenever you remind them of themselves starting out.

They might also resent newbies for the much better learning materials available today and even the possibility for easy shortcuts (llms). Back then there was no substitute for sitting down and fiddling with it for hours or reading a some poorly-written book.

Producers too, like music producers I mean. Though I can only speak to that field personally, it might be a similar situation, so I’ll share.

Well actually, I mean I guess it’s two things- one is that a male-dominated field with a lot of egos involved can pretty easily develop in a snooty direction. STEM careers are famous for that as well. It blows.

The second thing, the thing I was initially going to mention is that at least in the case of producing, there is an epic shitton of information you need to learn to do it well/properly, for starters. Even to just make your first piece, you need to actually STUDY it. That attracts two different archetypes, and the one that sucks is the overwhelming majority. :(

So, as you can probably imagine it’s super easy to find courses/tutorials online to learn stuff; you can find the whole field plus music theory on YouTube for free. The problem is that a lot of beginners don’t bother to do that, and/or don’t think they’ll need to. Unfortunately, it’s these lazy fucking casuals that saturate all our “ask someone who knows” spaces with asinine, uniformed nonsense questions.

So you see, by the time you see a question from a legitimate learner, sometimes even a peer, you’re so annoyed by the other sort that you can’t sort them.

That’s not fair to the legitimate learners, of course (and as someone who is not yet a full-on expert, I’ve been on the wrong end of this myself), but thats the sad state of things.

“Growing a thicker skin”, or so I’m told, is the only solution. :(

Nothing makes some sad sacks feel better about themselves than making fun of someone for not knowing what they have learned. Just know they have been pants on their heads stupid about something and had to ask for help. Count on it.

Just an asshole. My experience is different. Know that you learned from others and stood on the shoulders of giants.

The whole “pay it forward” culture is a thing. So next time, ignore that fucker and teach new people.

Engineers often have poor self-esteem. You can learn to program. Anyone can. It just takes work and persistence. Algebra is mandatory. Geometry helps, especially if you’re doing graphics. Calculus will be very useful, but not necessary for most application level work. Begin with math. The rest is syntax and rules of thumb.

Gamer culture I am assuming?

Btw they weren’t ignoring you, they just didn’t know the answer themselves and wanted to hide it.

IRC is still pretty popular with programmers and in my experience people are helpful on the various tech channels (on libera.chat at least)

I have trained 6 people to fill my shoes in my role. 1 gave up. 1 got fired. 1 was never really a programmer and that resulted in an argument with management about the role actually needed (they call it tier 2 support but you need to be a competent programmer to debug the issues). 2 of the others took other jobs for much more pay. The last guy is still here and he’s good I guess…

But I’m tired man… Tired of explaining the same things over again. It’s not the new guy’s fault but that doesn’t change the fact that I’ve grown jaded. I tend to realize I being a jerk, apologize and tone it down. Doesn’t change the fact that my gut response is jerkish.

This is why I do actually use AI - teach and troubleshoot. Infinite patience is something technicians do not possess. Rather the opposite. Claude will happily spend hours explaining things or asking me background questions, or letting me ask questions I would be afraid to ask otherwise. I hated having to spend an hour or two simply researching for the QUESTION I wanted to ask so that people wouldn’t accuse me of being an idiot, because I used the wrong terminology or something. I still encounter this from other sysadmins at work, so I often ask Claude if my question makes sense or if there’s chance for confusion. As a result I actually learn a lot more, a LOT faster, and get the rough touch so much less.