[palata]

I am the first to graduate college and to go into software. I learned a lot on my own before studying Computer Science, and still do after.

I can agree that people tend to quickly get condescending ("just google it") instead of giving keywords ("I think you are looking for X, Y, Z, try to read about them and come back when you have specific questions"). IMO the latter is constructive, the former is discouraging. The point here is: don't be condescending, try to give advice/keywords.

This said, many beginners think that their first project can be a complex application even though they don't know how to write code. The constructive comment for them is "start small, learn the language first", but of course many beginners don't take that as an answer. Beginners need to accept that learning software engineering takes time and dedication.

Finally, some devs tend to think that they are so smart that if they don't grasp something in 2 seconds, then that something is bad. I disagree with that. An experienced developer should know how to learn a new tool. If they don't like it, they can try another one, write their own (and see if a community follows them), or just accept that they don't have a choice. That's how it works.

[stametseater]

I think there must be some sort of culture gap in play here. I've been told to "google it" more times than I could ever count and not once have I perceived a condescending intent. And similarly, I have told people to google things many times and not once did I mean it to be condescending.

Usually it means "I don't know the answer off-hand, but I know that I could find it if I googled it. Therefore I'm telling you how I would find the answer." I know such advice is useful, even though everybody knows that google exists already, because most times that I was on the receiving end of this response, googling it really was the solution for me and I just needed somebody to snap their fingers in my face and remind me that I know how to find the answer myself.

"google it" is usually useful advice when I am on the receiving end of it, so I don't think it's condescending at all. Ditto "RTFM". If I turn to my coworker and ask "Hey Jimbo, what's the flag for making GNU Tar do bzip2 compression?", maybe he knows the answer off the top of his head and tells me -j, but likely he doesn't know, knows that he could find out in about 5 seconds with the manpage, and tells me to check the manpage. Which is wholly fair; we both know how to search a manpage, so why should he do that on my behalf instead of reminding me that I can look it up myself? I don't perceive any condescension here.

[palata]

> I've been told to "google it" more times than I could ever count and not once have I perceived a condescending intent.

Personally, when someone answers "google it", I read it as "fuck off". If you don't want to help me, just don't; no need to explicitly say you won't.

However, it's totally different if you say "you should read about concepts X, Y, Z", because that gives me keywords to search for.

> If I turn to my coworker and ask [...]

Well that's a bit different than asking a question to strangers online. Of course sometimes it makes sense to ask a coworker, though a quick search beforehand never hurts.

[watwut]

> This said, many beginners think that their first project can be a complex application even though they don't know how to write code. The constructive comment for them is "start small, learn the language first", but of course many beginners don't take that as an answer. Beginners need to accept that learning software engineering takes time and dedication.

That is just a phase, it is normal and nothing new even. I remember a lot of people of my generation whose idea of first project was the single player shooter with storyline and RPG like skills tree. Obviously they all failed. But I also think that they did learned a lot by trying or just reading up on it.

I think that for a complete beginner, whatever is motivating and fun for you, you will learn a lot from it. Because motivating and fun means you will keep going and keep learning. That is better in the long run then theoretically super effective start that will just make you bored and unmotiavted.