On Wed, May 21, 2008 at 1:30 PM, Peter Duniho <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
My _main_ objection is how newcomers to Mac development are treated. > Please, when someone new to the current Mac development environment brings > up one or more of these points, don't say "well, you're too inexperienced to > see why [Obj-C|Cocoa|the documentation|the tools] is/are so great". Why not? When the question is along the lines of "why isn't this exactly like C++/Java/Whatever," and the person asking it is a newbie, then the answer probably really is a subtle design decision that's beyond the newbie's current experience level. Don't say "you're riff-raff, it's supposed to be hard, we _like_ that it's > keeping you out". No one has. IMHO, you're being *way* too defensive here, and reading far more between the lines than the people you're talking to have been putting there. > Don't say "you must not have read the conceptual guides, otherwise all this > would be clear". Or any of the other condescending, presumptuous things > that I've seen said on a semi-regular basis. When someone is *demonstrating* that they haven't put any real effort into doing their own research, it's not a presumption. When someone asks questions that *are* clearly answered in the available docs, it's neither condescending nor presumptuous to point them to said docs. In fact, it'd be a disservice to them to offer my own half-baked summary of the docs, rather than point to the authoritative source. Instead, say something like "your complaint is a common one, you aren't > alone, and [most importantly] it's legitimate to have these concerns", > acknowledging that even if someone's concern is somewhat irrelevant (being > regarding a fundamental design aspect of the language or framework, for > example), it does color their perception and affect how they approach the > development environment. I'm sorry, but I couldn't disagree more strongly. This is a technical forum, and such places are long on technical detail and very, very short on warm fuzzies. If you want to know the technical reasons for specific design decisions, you can find that out by asking here. If you want to have your feelings validated, you'd be better off asking Dr. Phil. This, I think, may be at or close to the root of your difficulties here. You're interpreting the highly-technical and somewhat emotionally cold atmosphere as hostile, and responding to that perceived hostility. But the people you're talking to are not being purposefully hostile to you, or to any other newbie, and your continuous insistence that we must be doing so is getting in the way of communication. And then move directly to offering specific and constructive help with > specific problems. I've been seeing (and receiving) precisely that kind of help here for about eight years now. Maybe it's because I did my own homework first, and didn't spend a week demanding "more respect" from everyone who failed to agree with me 100%? > But mainly treating people's own impressions and feelings with more respect > would go a long way. This list is about finding help with solving your programming problems, not about helping you deal with your feelings. The technical issues being discussed here are black and white, and when someone is wrong they're wrong, regardless of how badly they might feel about it. This list, as with all technical lists, is somewhat cold and clinical in nature, but I've yet to see any huge number of people being treated with outright hostility or disrespect. In all honesty, I think that expecting emotional validation from a technical mailing list isn't terribly realistic. If that kind of thing is what you need, you'd be better off adopting a puppy. sherm-- -- Cocoa programming in Perl: http://camelbones.sourceforge.net _______________________________________________ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
