Comment on What is this format specifier?

• ono@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  This answer makes me so angry like revisiting trauma from learning programming.

  If you bothered to read the documentation, which exists in abundance on the web, in many books, and in the built-in manuals of various operating systems, and which I also linked in my answer, you would see a full explanation with clear examples.

  But you can’t be bothered with any of that, and instead expect other people to spend their time writing custom tutorials just for you?

  Your anger is misplaced. Please consider taking a walk.

  I just remember asking questions early on and getting answers more confusing that are even harder to parse

  When you ask people questions about their field of knowledge, and they don’t know you, it’s reasonable for them to assume you know the rudimentary basics. (Just as it would be reasonable for a fourth-year group to assume a that a stranger asking them questions has at least taken the first-year class.) Asking beyond your level of experience is not necessarily bad, but you should be ready to describe what you don’t understand, so that people can either elaborate with a helpful level of detail or send you to a forum more appropriate for your needs. For example:

  !learn_programming@programming.dev

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  • Touching_Grass@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I’m even angrier now.

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    • BitsOfBeard@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Go touch some gr… Oh, you are touching grass already??

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      • Touching_Grass@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Just touching some Poaceae

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  • abhibeckert@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    instead expect other people to spend their time writing custom tutorials just for you?

    Nobody asked you to spend your time helping people out on Lemmy, if you don’t want to do it, then don’t do it. There’s plenty of people here who are happy to do that.

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    • ono@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      And I don’t think it is reasonable to expect people to understand the basics.

      If we assumed everyone asking a question knows nothing at all of the surrounding topic, and responded at length addressing every related detail instead of what was asked, our answers would be tedious, and often annoying. It’s called overexplaining (among other things). It’s usually better to tailor the answer to the cues given by the person asking, and let them ask more questions if necessary.

      If they did, then they wouldn’t have asked.

      OP didn’t ask about the basics. They clearly know them already, as we can see from the language and specificity of their question. I was happy to answer and provide a link for deeper detail.

      But then someone else came along who apparently knew less than OP did, and decided express anger at me for not preemptively guessing and catering to their unstated special needs, in an answer that wasn’t intended for them in the first place. That was incredibly entitled and rude.

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• JackbyDev@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Which part of that is confusing to you? We can help make it easier to understand.

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  • Touching_Grass@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Its not confusion to me, I get what it is. Its the style of answer. Its like if you see a dog, ask what it is and someone answers Canis lupus familiaris.

    There’s no grokking that. You either know or you don’t. If they’re asking what .2f then lots of answers here do a good job describing that it formats the value to two decimal places. We can all do something with that at any level.

    Saying its a crombopulater sub cablator is much harder to process. It just seems like an answer thats likely to make the person to have to ask more questions or frustrated

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    • Turun@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Its like if you see a dog, ask what it is and someone answers Canis lupus familiaris.

      …and gives you a link to the Wikipedia page about dogs.

      It’s not a good answer in the sense that they did not do the work of copying and rephrasing the content of the website they linked, you have to do some of the work yourself. But it’s a very thorough answer that gives you all the information you need about formatting. Including examples of pretty much exactly the question OP asked.

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    • JackbyDev@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I’m not looking for meta level criticism of this style of advice, I’m trying to ask OP what was confusing on this page and help them learn how to read this page specifically. I’m not saying OP should be able to understand this page. I’m not saying this style of advice is acceptable or not.

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  • abhibeckert@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    The confusion is you just provided sample code showing how “%.2f” works - you didn’t answer the question which was what does that sequence of characters actually mean? What does the percent do. What does the dot do. What does the 2. What does the f do.

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    • JackbyDev@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      OP got the answer to those in another comment, I’m asking what part they need help understanding in this link. Also, I didn’t provide the link.

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