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Salvatore Terress wrote: or is this forum now a " social media chat " box?
Ther lounge? Definitively Yes.
Look at the top of this board.Quote: Welcome to the Lounge
For discussing anything related to a software developer's life but is not for programming questions. Got a programming question?
The Lounge is rated Safe For Work. If you're about to post something inappropriate for a shared office environment, then don't post it. No ads, no abuse, and no programming questions. Trolling, (political, climate, religious or whatever) will result in your account being removed.
The "got a programming question" in red is a link that brings you to the correct place to ask.
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Salvatore Terress wrote: and did not actually offered a solution.
Maybe there isn't a simple solution. Or perhaps your question was not clear enough for anyone to figure out what it was all about.
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You must agree that you regularly see cases - I am not excluding CP here - where other readers are so eager to 'help' that they do not waste the time to read the entire problem description before writing down their 'contribution'.
I have learned to start my problem descriptions with a declaration of what is not my problem: E.g. I am not looking for an alternative to tool X, I am just using tool X to illustrate a general problem, and that is what I want to solve! Spelling that out in a conclusive remark is almost useless; half of the readers won't notice it. Also I have learned to be very explicit about the core of my problem, always phrasing it as a question, preferably prefixed with 'My problem is this: ... ?' - otherwise, helpers might expand to great length on any detail that you have mentioned, but only to explain the problem, not as the problem.
Having lots of people eager to help you is a great thing - and one major reason why I stick with CP. Everything comes with a price, like a fair share of 'helpful' answers that serves more to display helpfulness than to be of real help. I think that is a moderate price to pay. Others may have higher expectations. Maybe they should try SO. Maybe they return to CP after a week or a month  . (I did.)
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
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OP is well known for poorly phrased questions and complaining that he doesn't get a good enough service.
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I agree 100%, which is why I do not offer help to the OP anymore. If one is to look at the enormous amount of questions asked it qualifies the OP as a NCV (not explaining this) to a point where it seems that we are a free lecturing institute offering, irrespective if it is time given of our own!
It now seems that it is expected of anyone who is willing to help to do so as if there is a salary involved or else... - totally disgusting. 
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trønderen wrote: where other readers are so eager to 'help' that they do not waste the time to read the entire problem description before writing down their 'contribution'.
Ah, I see you're familiar with SO's Standard Operating Procedure. 
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I will expect flaming repose , but I " all I know I learn at kindergarten " comes to mind...
This forum have very simple and pointed "rules" about working with non English speaking folks, likes me.
There is a part about "read the post "...
and that is too far down the rules list for SOME English speaking folks to read...
Unfortunately there is nada a'bout conversing with
people of different levels of TECHNICAL knowledge.
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All feedback / answers have to be "taken with a grain of salt".
I've had to develop very thick skin because I post a lot of questions on StackOverflow and most of the time they are down-voted, answer incorrectly etc.
Check out this one which the person answered completely wrong and tried to say I was wrong[^].
In the end, I discovered the answer myself and wrote it up for myself.
I actually once posted a question to electronics.stackexchange.com (where the "engineers" tolerate nothing outside of their understanding) about why electrolytic capacitors are rated for higher voltage as the capacitance (measured in farads (uF, pF, etc) goes down.
Not only did they not answer it, they deleted my question entirely and it had taken me a long while to write up the question and I wish I still had that question because it was interesting.
I know that it must also be infinitely more difficult when there is a language difference involved also. Hope you get things worked out.
If you get a chance, check this one out where I answered the question correctly but got down-voted and then the person tried to tell me why my working code was wrong. it was ridiculous.
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/46075228/get-http-response-status-code-of-urlsession-shared-datatask/78078754#78078754[^]
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I will say to your defense:
Most IT people (or you could make it more general, if you like: Most people with a university degree) are very poor at explaining a problem within their field of expertise to someone outside the field. Their advanced knowledge stands in the way.
Even when I ask my co-workers to explain something (I have a Master in Comp.Sci), I may have to guide them through their explanation, telling them 'First, explain how this part works, we'll take the rest afterwards', rather than everything messed up. They use terms that are specific to the stuff they are trying to explain, without explaining the term, and I have to stop them and demand an explanation. When they introduce some 'concept', I ask questions about how this concept differs from this and that older and well known concept. And so on. A good teacher/lecturer would structure his presentation, explain terms, refer to related, known stuff, and adapt the presentation to whatever background the audience has.
Most IT people just opens the sluice gates to let their immense flood of advance knowledge drown you. When the audience doesn't understand a word, the IT expert usually blames the audience  Unfortunately, publishing books is so cheap nowadays that you see the same in a lot of IT books: You senses that the author is really knowledgeable, but the explanations are outright terrible. Sometimes, the better you know the subject area yourself, the more you see how bad the presentation is, how bad the examples are.
Wikipedia is certainly no exception (in many articles, not all): When I try to make sense of them, I often ask myself: Is there a single person in the world who will understand this - and also will look it up in Wikipedia? If it takes a Master to understand the article, then you probably learned enough in your studies that you know all the stuff in the article!
Some textbook authors are excellent. Some academics, even IT people, have an impressing ability to make even complex issues look easy and obvious to a lesser qualified audience. I wish we had a lot more of those. As long as that is not the case, we will have to cope with explanations that requires a lot of work to be deciphered. Sometimes you ask supplementary questions; sometimes the answer gives you the proper keywords for a google search for more understandable explanations. We won't run into those great pedagogics all the time, and have to live with it.
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
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trønderen wrote: Some textbook authors are excellent. Some academics, even IT people, have an impressing ability to make even complex issues look easy and obvious to a lesser qualified audience.
A personal story from way back when:
In my third Uni third year, we had an Electronics course and everyone said if you pass it, it's almost like having the diploma in your pocket. The amazing part was that after every course I would come out convinced I understood everything but when I would read the course again I would realize I don't have a clue. Took me a while to figure out the trick the teacher was using. He would insist on simple things until you realized how obvious they were and just gloss over complicated stuff. Almost like saying "you see 2 plus 2 equals 4 because if you take 2 fingers and 2 fingers that makes 4 fingers... and, by the way, the Laplacian of the electric field in the junction is given by this differential equation...".
He had an impressing ability of masking the the complicated things in deceptive simplicity. Although I passed the course, cannot say I enjoyed it.
Mircea
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I fully believe you story. Maybe that lecturer did not belong in the class of 'excellent' lecturers. Glossing over complexity can be very counter-productive, as you indicate.
However: Grasping the main idea, maybe in a somewhat simplistic way, can be an essential stepping stone. There are exception situations, corner cases, that require special consideration. They can come later. Grasp the main ideas first, even if they do not cover everything.
A good lecturer will make it clear where you might encounter exceptions to the main rules, and those cases will be looked at later. A bad lecturer will use his immense knowledge by rushing on to all the corner cases and exceptions long before the students have had an opportunity to digest the normal case.
Regarding calculus concepts: Lots of students have merely learned 'That's the way we do it!' and have really never truly understood why that's the way to do it. That nature is that way - it is obvious and natural! A good lecturer makes it obvious to you why it simply has to be that way, why the calculus is the way it is.
I remember from my high school years when I got hold of some good books in relativity, and one night realized that the twin paradox simply had to be that way! Anything else would have been completely illogical! Later, I tried to find other textbooks that would explain more advanced topics in relativity in a manner that made it equally obvious. I never found any. But when I was 16-17 yo, I was at the stage where special relativity was an obvious thing to me, even though I was certainly not a calculus wiz kid - not then, and never since.
To me, as a teenager, the twin paradox was self-evident even without advanced differential math. A relativity wiz would probably say that my accept for the twin paradox as something obvious is little worth, it doesn't reflect all the complexity of the calculus. That may be right, but if I can fully accept and and appreciate the twin paradox without all that calculus, I have come a long way compared to a lot of the people around me!
When I ask someone to explain a solution to me, I always ask them to first present an 'intuitive' solution. Your mainline thoughts, void of mathematical details, data types, lambdas, locking mechanisms ... Which principles do you follow in this solution? I consider calculus to be at the coding level. You can say a lot about a system without referring to implementation code. You can say a lot about relativity without going into calculus. And about electrical fields. Just like good system documentation should lead you up to and prepare you for the implementation code, a good lecture on electrical fields or the twin paradox should lead you up to the calculus to take it further. A good one, that is. Not all lectures are good ones.
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
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I think we are going on a tangent here, but hey, it's the Lounge so who cares!
trønderen wrote: I remember from my high school years when I got hold of some good books in relativity
For me the fuse was George Gamow's One, Two, Three ... Infinity. Facts & Speculations of Science[^] when I was 12. Got my mind started on concepts like transcendental numbers, atomic structure, relativity - a smorgasbord of delicious intellectual concepts for a nerdy kid 
trønderen wrote: even though I was certainly not a calculus wiz kid - not then, and never since.
Funny how our brains can work differently. For some people concepts like music, colors, or relativity for that matter, are absolutely natural. For me they are all learned concepts that I can perceive and understand but I cannot call them natural. With calculus meanwhile, I'm a fish in the water In the end all these differences make the world an interesting place to live. With nerds like me it would be such a boring place.
Mircea
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Quote: "...I am looking for a solution..."
is it not obvious?
Firstly, this post comes across very arrogant and I personally think that you are limiting your future assistance from most members that have been supporting you loyally in the past in your numerous questions for help.
You might not think that a post from a person/member is related or is a solution to your question but I can almost ensure you that the person/member that took the time, their own free time at that, to answer your question that you found unsolvable saw it as a solution. For you to then question that free time given to your cause is totally unacceptable and I really think you should re-think your post here and offer some kind of apology.
I for one will ignore your future questions and will rather spend my free time helping someone that will appreciate the effort. I also welcome your down vote on this as it will prove my point.
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Andre Oosthuizen wrote: can almost ensure you that the person/member that took the time, their own free time at that, to answer your question that you found unsolvable saw it as a solution
See my signature... it should actually be so easy... 
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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On this site, this forum is purely social.
On this site, there are other forums [or fora]. Please see top of page.
"If we don't change direction, we'll end up where we're going"
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Salvatore Terress wrote: "...I am looking for a solution..."
is it not obvious?
Just to repeat what others are saying, I also know that if I don't see much effort put into the question... like did the poster try A or B or at least Google something first... I'm less inclined to help. Not trying to saying all replies are perfect, and I do agree I've seen some bad ones. But, it's safe to say certainly not all posters are perfect either.
I find if a poster respects the time of the peeps who answer, enough to do just a little work - even if that means writing more than "where codez?" - it does tend to go better. I think... I hope... maybe?
Jeremy Falcon
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That made no sense to me!
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
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Well, my honest feelings about this inelegant fellow is that until he "'fesses" up and gives us the true location of his "unseenedness" (by editing his particulars to out his use of the mercan flag) he's just being colorful for the sake of color.
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OK folks, you obviously looking for
"I am sorry for posting such rant"
so here it is
"I am sorry for posting such rant"
anything to make you feel better for wasting your voluntary time
( unfortunately )
some of you (obviously) do not care wasting mine time.
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Salvatore Terress wrote: some of you (obviously) do not care wasting mine time.
Yeah, you just had to say it. The only person who wastes your time is you, with these childish whines that you are not getting the service you think you are entitled to.
modified 4hrs 20mins ago.
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I have been thinking about the area of asking questions recently.
Asking a well formed question is a skill, it's not a given that everyone knows how to ask a well-formed question.
I think teaching kids how to ask a question should be part of what they learn at school.
Salvatore Terress wrote: do I have to spell it out ?
Yes, you do have to spell it out.
Here is a great example of asking questions with a journalist asking Richard Feynman a question, where Feynman points out how the question is difficult to answer ->Richard Feynman Magnets - YouTube[^]
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens
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(Importunately ) I have to disagree for (simple) reason
such point of view emphasizes the FORM of the question and ( most of the time)
misses the subject of the question.
I have experienced sites which basically stopped the post
because it was not formatted properly or my English was not good enough,
and when my post was accepted it was promptly rewritten.
Of course when
I pointed out that my post was not for purpose of perfect English presentation
I was prompt banned.
And there are sites which tells me that "your past posts were not accepted well..."
All of this is NOT based on
"customer is always right..."
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