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 Post subject: New Members (was: Why do people say C is better than Assembly?)
PostPosted: Thu Jan 12, 2017 6:01 am 
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Roman wrote:
I am amazed how patient local users are. I know a big forum where Nuno, Andrew, octacone and Lukand would get banned pretty quickly.

Ain't that the truth.

Allowing these people to post the same old mistakes and trivial questions over and over again severely impinges on the reputation of this website.


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 Post subject: Re: Why do people say C is better than Assembly?
PostPosted: Thu Jan 12, 2017 7:36 am 
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Hi,

iansjack wrote:
Allowing these people to post the same old mistakes and trivial questions over and over again severely impinges on the reputation of this website.


To be perfectly frank: NO.

What is happening is that new people come to this site seeking knowledge (which is exactly what the forums are for), and what they get is a pack of rabid morons who fail to point them in the right direction, fail to provide any useful advice, and fail to even try to help them. Instead, what they get is a massive 2 pages of off-topic trash and "commentary" from people that have nothing better to do with their time than whine about other members and bicker amongst themselves, that has nothing to do with the question/s the poster asked whatsoever.

It's these rabid morons on that are responsible for 90% of the noise and 100% of the problem; not the (naturally enthusiastic and inexperienced) new people.


Cheers,

Brendan

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 Post subject: Re: Why do people say C is better than Assembly?
PostPosted: Thu Jan 12, 2017 8:15 am 
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That's incorrect, and it's a shame that a moderator can't see the problem.

What happens is that some people come here, ask simple questions, get simple answers - and some advice on further reading - go away and think about it and improve their knowledge.

Unfortunately there are a small number who ask simple questions, get simple answers - and some advice on further reading - go away and ignore that advice and come back with the same question time after time. Eventually this royally pisses off both those trying to help and others trying to learn.

A bigger problem is that there are moderators on this forum who fail to deal with those who aren't prepared to make any effort.

Another problem is that any criticism of the moderators is immediately deleted in order to preserve their self-importance.

And that's why this forum is largely a waste of time nowadays.


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 Post subject: Re: Why do people say C is better than Assembly?
PostPosted: Thu Jan 12, 2017 8:24 am 
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iansjack wrote:
Another problem is that any criticism of the moderators is immediately deleted in order to preserve their self-importance.
Which posts were deleted?
iansjack wrote:
And that's why this forum is largely a waste of time nowadays.
You can hide posts with the foes list.

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 Post subject: Re: Why do people say C is better than Assembly?
PostPosted: Thu Jan 12, 2017 8:39 am 
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I think that the problem is not the people themselves, but their ability to learn. Not all people are born equal. Some of them need more time to learn a specific thing. There are folks who just can't magically convert theory to code, folks who need a detailed explanation in order for them to understand. I am really sad when I see how cruel people are. Remember when you were younger and didn't even know what GDT was, remember when you were thinking what to put inside "LGDT" instruction. If you know something that doesn't mean other person knows it equally well, even when being explained to. Some people just need more "pushing" and time to understand something. Reading a book will only help you with theoretical knowledge. People are not machines they can't convert written instructions to code, they need to deeply understand what they are doing. You shouldn't be frustrated if you see a topic called "IDT triple faults" or "user mode triple faults", that is all normal. New people keep coming every single day, they don't know what you know. Helping them sometimes can be frustrating, but that is not because they don't want to learn, but because they don't know it. Sometimes I read something and have no idea what I have just read. I remember that it took me quite a while actually to understand how GDT works. I was just like copying some code that worked from one place to another until I realized what those symbols actually meant to the computer. After that I was able to produce that code myself, perfectly aware of what was going on. So please, have patience for novice, they are here to learn, not for you guys to scare them away. Sorry if this was too deep or off-topic.

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 Post subject: Re: Why do people say C is better than Assembly?
PostPosted: Thu Jan 12, 2017 8:59 am 
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zenzizenzicube wrote:
Which posts were deleted?
I can't give you details as the posts no longer exists, but posts that I have made in the past criticising a moderator have disappeared without trace.

Fair enough - it's their forum; if they can't take a bit of criticisism then make like it never existed. No doubt I would do the same in their position.

The "Foes" list is useful, but not a perfect answer - it can make threads seem a little odd sometimes. And they don't solve the problem that people just browsing the forum, or using Google, will see the disruptive posts. That's where the reputation of the forum suffers, not with regular users.

Ah - you can't put moderators on your foes list. That's a shame.


Last edited by iansjack on Thu Jan 12, 2017 9:42 am, edited 1 time in total.

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 Post subject: Re: Why do people say C is better than Assembly?
PostPosted: Thu Jan 12, 2017 9:03 am 
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octacone wrote:
Remember when you were younger and didn't even know what GDT was, remember when you were thinking what to put inside "LGDT" instruction.
I know what you mean, but I didn't learn those things by posting on forums. I read books.

If the quality of the posts nowadays are what people want then fair enough. But it decreases the usefulness of the forum for my purposes, and is against the spirit of the FAQ (required knowledge, and all that). But I accept that the forum is migrating from a serious discussion place to a playground for kids - that's fine, but it's just not for me, thank you.


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 Post subject: Re: Why do people say C is better than Assembly?
PostPosted: Thu Jan 12, 2017 9:07 am 
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octacone: most of what you're saying is correct. But the majority of us didn't learn by posting here for every little problem we face. We tried to do it ourselves one time, two times, three times and even ten times, and then we post here asking for help. For example, here I asked for help in my I/O APIC implementation. I tried to do it myself more than 10 times before posting, and actually posted because I have read a resource that gave me wrong information before posting.
BTW, some of the recent questions aren't even related to OSDev. For example, Nuno had a function which takes two arguments (a void* and a uint16_t) and was complaining why it didn't accept a structure. For example, Andrew started arguing about something debatable (like whether C or assembly is better). These questions aren't related to OSDev at all and ruin the reputation of this site, as iansjack said.

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 Post subject: Re: Why do people say C is better than Assembly?
PostPosted: Thu Jan 12, 2017 9:39 am 
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Totally agreed with omarrx, most of us struggled with the problems until we got a complete dead end, devouring every bit of reading we could get to solve the problems we faced, and when we asked questions, we made sure to be as detailed as we could be. Instead now we have people who are clearly not ready yet, are unwilling to read documentation or expect us to do their debugging for them. This is bound to get annoying.

I do however agree that many times there are very reasonable threads too where some people end up not being useful and just complaining about how something couldn't be done. But that's not the case here.

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 Post subject: Re: Why do people say C is better than Assembly?
PostPosted: Thu Jan 12, 2017 4:55 pm 
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Hi,

iansjack wrote:
That's incorrect, and it's a shame that a moderator can't see the problem.

What happens is that some people come here, ask simple questions, get simple answers - and some advice on further reading - go away and think about it and improve their knowledge.

Unfortunately there are a small number who ask simple questions, get simple answers - and some advice on further reading - go away and ignore that advice and come back with the same question time after time. Eventually this royally pisses off both those trying to help and others trying to learn.


If that happens, a smart person wouldn't reply, and an even smarter person might just reply with "see the answer you were already given <here>" (which is both helpful, but also serves to show the poster that they've asked the same question before and makes them feel a little guilty and makes it less likely they'll do the same again).

Sadly, this doesn't happen.

What happens is that stupid people start discussing the person (instead of the person's question), then more stupid people continue that discussion, then the original poster has little choice but to defend themselves and fight back, then it becomes argumen. Then I have to try and clean up the mess caused by the stupid people; but by then it's too late - the new person has already learned to behave like the stupid people (and hasn't learnt to behave in a mature and professional way).

Yesterday I deleted a total of 28 posts from the "Why do people say C is better than Assembly?" topic. Some of them I'd classify as "harmless but not helping", and most I'd classify as either causing the problem or contributing to the problem (and not helping).

iansjack wrote:
A bigger problem is that there are moderators on this forum who fail to deal with those who aren't prepared to make any effort.


No. You either don't understand how I deal with these people or don't agree with my methods. I try to use "patient guidance" (posts like this one and this one) that are designed to help someone become a better programmer/OS developer (over time). You only want me to attack or ban and aren't interested in helping beginners.

iansjack wrote:
Another problem is that any criticism of the moderators is immediately deleted in order to preserve their self-importance.


No. Offensive posts (that aren't constructive criticism) and/or off-topic posts are deleted regardless of who they're aimed at.


Cheers,

Brendan

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 Post subject: Re: Why do people say C is better than Assembly?
PostPosted: Thu Jan 12, 2017 5:03 pm 
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Hi,

iansjack wrote:
octacone wrote:
Remember when you were younger and didn't even know what GDT was, remember when you were thinking what to put inside "LGDT" instruction.
I know what you mean, but I didn't learn those things by posting on forums. I read books.


I began learning from books too; but that was a completely different century before the Internet became ubiquitous. Times change. People rarely use books now because the Internet is faster and cheaper and more convenient; and even when they do use books they're electronic copies downloaded from the Internet because someone helpful gave them a link.

hgoel wrote:
Totally agreed with omarrx, most of us struggled with the problems until we got a complete dead end, devouring every bit of reading we could get to solve the problems we faced, and when we asked questions, we made sure to be as detailed as we could be. Instead now we have people who are clearly not ready yet, are unwilling to read documentation or expect us to do their debugging for them. This is bound to get annoying.


If someone is unwilling to read documentation, what is the best way to encourage them to become willing to read documentation? I can guarantee that calling them names will never work.


Cheers,

Brendan

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For all things; perfection is, and will always remain, impossible to achieve in practice. However; by striving for perfection we create things that are as perfect as practically possible. Let the pursuit of perfection be our guide.


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 Post subject: Re: New Members (was: Why do people say C is better than @$$
PostPosted: Thu Jan 12, 2017 5:42 pm 
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I completely agree with you on name calling not actually encouraging someone to read documentation, I don't think I have done any name calling publicly. I've either ignored or attempted to provide references for people to continue learning. But as a result I do at minimum expect a developer to be driven to learn. The internet is no excuse for not doing one's own research. In fact it leaves even less of a reason to not do research. I'm of the opinion that the ability to patiently comb through documentation is a prerequisite to osdev, so I will definitely be annoyed at someone who doesn't demonstrate such an effort, I would be perfectly happy with a person who at least bothers to read the documentation, explains what they understood and still doesn't understand than a person who hasn't put forward such an effort. After all, if you want people to spend their time on you, you need to demonstrate that it's worth it. All said though, I agree that name calling doesn't do anything to fix this. It ought to be reserved to private channels.

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 Post subject: Re: New Members
PostPosted: Thu Jan 12, 2017 6:06 pm 
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What we need to crack down on is people coming to the osdev community with little to no knowledge of programming who refuse to step away and actually learn programming. These are the people who are most in need of actually learning how programming works before they can tackle even the fundamentals of low-level programming and OS development, lest they continue to do nothing but ask incredibly basic questions that are only vaguely related to osdev. That and shitposting. Whole lotta that going on.

$0.02


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 Post subject: Re: New Members (was: Why do people say C is better than @$$
PostPosted: Thu Jan 12, 2017 6:28 pm 
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Hi,

hgoel wrote:
I completely agree with you on name calling not actually encouraging someone to read documentation, I don't think I have done any name calling publicly. I've either ignored or attempted to provide references for people to continue learning. But as a result I do at minimum expect a developer to be driven to learn. The internet is no excuse for not doing one's own research. In fact it leaves even less of a reason to not do research. I'm of the opinion that the ability to patiently comb through documentation is a prerequisite to osdev, so I will definitely be annoyed at someone who doesn't demonstrate such an effort, I would be perfectly happy with a person who at least bothers to read the documentation, explains what they understood and still doesn't understand than a person who hasn't put forward such an effort. After all, if you want people to spend their time on you, you need to demonstrate that it's worth it. All said though, I agree that name calling doesn't do anything to fix this. It ought to be reserved to private channels.


I agree (sort of). The ability to patiently comb through documentation is a prerequisite to successful OS development; but it's also a skill that needs to be learnt somewhere. These forums should be a place where people can learn skills that are needed for successful OS development (or at a minimum, a place where people are politely redirected to somewhere else that they can obtain skills that are needed for successful OS development); and not a place were people are abused and/or offended and/or taught to behave like trolls because some people don't want to bother teaching, helping or politely redirecting.

Note: I'm not sure that it's entirely a skill. If a person knows where to look and knows that it's faster/easier/better to find the information themselves, then (by virtue of laziness) they'd find the information they want themselves. It's more about showing people where to look and/or showing them how to figure out where to look and/or showing them that it is faster/easier/better to find the information themselves. This is all mostly "knowledge" rather than "skill" (e.g. the knowledge of where to look). The "skill" component of it is being able to understand (and being familiar/comfortable with) technical writing, which isn't like "plain English" (due to a reliance on terminology and an amount of formality intended to minimise ambiguity), and people can need some help with that too (even if English is their native language).


Cheers,

Brendan

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For all things; perfection is, and will always remain, impossible to achieve in practice. However; by striving for perfection we create things that are as perfect as practically possible. Let the pursuit of perfection be our guide.


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 Post subject: Re: New Members (was: Why do people say C is better than @$$
PostPosted: Thu Jan 12, 2017 6:55 pm 
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Brendan wrote:
Note: I'm not sure that it's entirely a skill. If a person knows where to look and knows that it's faster/easier/better to find the information themselves, then (by virtue of laziness) they'd find the information they want themselves. It's more about showing people where to look and/or showing them how to figure out where to look and/or showing them that it is faster/easier/better to find the information themselves. This is all mostly "knowledge" rather than "skill" (e.g. the knowledge of where to look). The "skill" component of it is being able to understand (and being familiar/comfortable with) technical writing, which isn't like "plain English" (due to a reliance on terminology and an amount of formality intended to minimise ambiguity), and people can need some help with that too (even if English is their native language).



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