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by sillysaurus3
4201 days ago
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Why are we trying to insinuate they're lying? Either there's evidence or there's not, and without some pretty strong evidence, this is just depressing. Especially from the point of view of someone who might like to one day present a project they've been working on to "the internet." I'm close to someone who I've been watching slowly discover their passion for programming over the last six months or so. They never realized they'd care so much, or be any good at it. I've been giving consistent positive reinforcement, and I dread the day that they roll out their first real achievement to the masses. They might just throw their hands up in the air and give up entirely, judging by how people usually act. |
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One, nobody's forced to share their project/efforts on the Internet, which is essentially the entire planet, all of humanity, 24x7 for all the rest of time (info wants to live forever, etc.) We are all free to keep our things private, off-line, just among friends, etc. You're free to approach people in real life you know for feedback, tips, encouragement. They're more likely to be polite, and also you're not asking something of a total stranger.
Second, there's been a cultural change that a lot of younger people or newbs may not be aware of. For folks of the pre-Internet, "first with computers" generation, that's precisely the standard operating environment when we we learning, just starting out, taking those early baby steps. When we were first scribbling out our first programs, however naive or full of bugs or flaws, we didn't immediately go push it in the faces of millions of strangers across the world (ala Show HN, GitHub, blogs, etc), a good portion of whom would be professionals alot further along, and say "omg look at this isn't it amazing I'm a hacker now please hire me k thx" -- we couldn't because the Interent didn't really exist and most of these modern ways of publishing and sharing didn't exist. So most of that early crude, naive, sometimes embarassing stage was done in private, off-line, or only among friends or teachers known personally. Today we have the equivalent of proud (and healthily, voluntarily deluded) parents posting their kindegartener's first crayon house-and-trees-and-sun drawings out onto blogs, GitHub, HN, Reddit, YouTube, etc and then being shocked or having their feelings hurt when others aren't as eaually blown away as them, and in some cases critical or dismissive. Its just the nature of the beast. Nobody forced them to share those things, and in that public global anonymous mixed (newbs/kids and experts/pro's) of a forum. They chose that. And it makes sense you'll also get back a mix of reactions, some of which you won't like.
What the modern Internet enables today has lots of great qualities (eg. I can download all this cool software for free, Wikipedia, Kickstarter, etc etc) but it also enables lots of sucky stuff (eg. eternal September, eternal kindegarten mode, arrogant assholes, FAQs, RTFMs, trolls, flamewars, phishing, astroturfing, doxing, etc.) Its hard to enable one without the other.