It is clear that the signal to noise ratio of the WWW is getting worse. It’s much harder to find good content when using a good old search engine. And if it’s good it is usually hosted on Reddit or Stackexchange.
So remember, even if it’s easy too Google something (well, it isn’t nowadays), we want to create a fediverse of good content that helps people (I hope). So, it’s always better to write a real answer if you have the time and energy. Please help boost the SNR and reverse the AI fueled information degradation loop.
That kind of behavior can also be a sign that the documentation is hard to find or hard to comprehend. Or that something isn’t documented at all, but the seniors imagine it is, because the answer is obvious to them.
Me. This is me. I’m trying to figure out linux.
“How do I do…something”
“Oh, that’s easy! Just do this and this and this. Make sure you check that that and that.”
“Ok…now how do I do the things you just said?”
“Just do those things the right way.”
“I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT THOSE TERMS MEAN, LET ALONE HOW TO DO THEM!!!”
“Ugh, this guy can’t even follow simple directions. What part of that do you not understand???”
“Uhhhhhh…core concepts?”
Average Familiarity
Good luck with Linux. Sorry you have to deal with people who don’t know how to teach new users.
And then you have all the people who tell you you’re using the wrong flavor of linux and if you knew anything you would have used the version they’re using. BITCH YOU’VE BEEN TELLING ME THAT I WAS USING THE WRONG OS FOR YEARS AND NOW I SWITCH AND I’M STILL DOING IT WRONG?!
make comes to mind: I can find the docs for whatever function I want to use, but I honestly have such a hard time comprehending what they mean. It’s especially frustrating because I can tell that all the information is there, and it’s just me not being able to understand it, so I don’t want to ask others for help, cause then I’m just bothering people with a problem that I’ve in principle already found the answer to, I’m just not able to apply the answer.
Then again, I’ve heard plenty of other people complain that the cmake docs are hard to understand…
I can relate to this. And off the record (I know it’s not always a super appreciated opinion in the Fediverse): for this kind of problem I find that LLMs help a lot.
Use the Source, Luke!