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An old topic, but in the Q&As I've seen a lot of questions about cross-thread failures in UIs. It gets asked time and time again and yet is so very basic. There must be a million and one things on the internet about it, so why can't people just Google around a bit rather than charge in and demand an answer? Or even more radical, buy a book and learn a bit about the subject?
Whilst the intentions of Q&As are admirable, I think by answering questions such as this we are just aiding the demise of experienced developers who know their field. Seriously, why should we bother to help people who make no effort themselves? Oh yes, reputation points.
Regards,
Rob Philpott.
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Yeah, I've been feeling the same way about the future of software development for, oh, the last 6+ years or so. Having been on CP since 2003, I just watched the quality and knowledge level of the questions plummet over that time.
It used to be you could get a lot of questions that made you think and write small test projects to verify what was being seen, what the behavior of something was and test possible solutions before posting them. I've got a ton of little apps like that laying around.
Now, it's all rubber stamp answers to the same basic questions over and over again. Nobody knows anything about how to teach themselves anymore. They all think it's faster (and hence better) to ask someone to "guide them" through a problem. They miss that they are not the ones thinking the problem through and hence are not learning anything about how to debug their own code.
Hell, they're not even learning new technologies and techniques. They're just copying and pasting 5 to 7 year old code, hoping for the best.
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I think its because we are Developers: a lot of them are Code Monkeys. Or possibly just monkeys.
Don't expect this to get better: The UK government wants to "teach programming" to all kids[^] - imagine what that is going to do to the quality level of questions!
Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it. --- George Santayana (December 16, 1863 – September 26, 1952)
Those who fail to clear history are doomed to explain it. --- OriginalGriff (February 24, 1959 – ∞)
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Improve them probably [sarcasm]
Regards,
Rob Philpott.
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Strangely enough I was tempted to add that to my post... 
Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it. --- George Santayana (December 16, 1863 – September 26, 1952)
Those who fail to clear history are doomed to explain it. --- OriginalGriff (February 24, 1959 – ∞)
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A 14 year old who's been taught some basic stuff in school would be in a much better position to ask sensible questions that most of what we see in Q&A these days.
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Probably because most questions are currently posted by a 14 year old who didn't listen while he was taught some basic stuff in school...
Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it. --- George Santayana (December 16, 1863 – September 26, 1952)
Those who fail to clear history are doomed to explain it. --- OriginalGriff (February 24, 1959 – ∞)
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The thing that's lacking, apparent in these "questions", is a complete lack of critical thinking skills.
I think that's what is going to be the difference between what we see now and what the UK is going to turn out.
Sadly, I don't see the same thing happening in the US because there's no short-term money in it for US companies and politicians, not to mention what the religious fanatics want to do to our education system.
I really do weep when I read crap like this[^]. I see the US education system becoming a dump if this continues.
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You are in a good position to make observations being very active on the Q&A. One can certainly learn a lot about world trends by observing what is going on there.
We probably come from a generation that was used to wringing everything out of limited resources while we taught ourselves technologies. The internet has changed that. If only you could ask programming questions on Facebook - that would get rid of a lot of the spam.
The proliferation of quite trivial questions is accompanied by some pretty poor answers and in some cases it seems to be turning into the blind leading the blind.
Peter Wasser
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts." - Bertrand Russell
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pwasser wrote: The proliferation of quite trivial questions is accompanied by some pretty poor
answers and in some cases it seems to be turning into the blind leading the
blind.
Yes, I see that too. Just because the ignorant see that they can reply doesn't mean that they should.
Now, I know that I am probably going to get replies like "that's how conversationa and group learning work!". Yeah, when was the last time you saw one of those "blind leading the blind" posts turn into a good discussion?? It doesn't happen very often.
What does happen more often is that bad questions get bad (or worse!) answers then the search engines find them and because "Google said it it must be true" crap code ends up in production applications.
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pwasser wrote: We probably come from a generation that was used to wringing everything out of
limited resources while we taught ourselves technologies. The internet has
changed that.
No, it hasn't changed the process at all. The Internet just made it easier to get access to more and more educational resources and made it easier to teach yourself more and more things. I get more and more out of my, now, not so "limited resources".
pwasser wrote: You are in a good position to make observations being very active on the Q&A
I'm not as active in the forums and QA as I once was. I've got too much of my own code to write and, frankly, the quality of the people asking the questions is depressing to me. I'm not so motivated as I once was because I've found that you can put a lot into an answer and either back back a blank stare or the person has no clue what you're talking about because they don't know the basics. It's always simple things, like what a string is, or an array, or no clue how to use the debugger, or even setting a breakpoint is beyond their comprehension.
I feel as though I'm wasting my time talking to a brick wall that expects me to remote into their machine and fix their code for them because they couldn't be bothered to put the work in to teach themselves anything.
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I fully agree with you. What I was trying to say about wringing out limited resources was that at least in my case I spent a lot of time reading and reading again anything I had while trying various code. There was no internet to jump to and post a global question.
Peter Wasser
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts." - Bertrand Russell
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I hear that. I remember sitting with a book on some assembly language for some processor I can't remember back in 1980(?) and walking through the code examples by hand figuring out what they did and how they worked. Very interesting stuff and it taught me a lot about how processors worked.
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Threads are an old favorite magic bullet. On the surface it sounds like you can do a whole bunch of things, all at the same time. Unfortunately it takes a lot of painful experience and some hard-won discipline to be able to do this effectively, especially within a UI.
I think a lot of the Q&A's get themselves in over their heads, and now they're looking for a simple solution. Obviously, there isn't one.
Software Zen: delete this;
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In all fairness though, threads are hard. I can say with great certainty that most developers don't understand them, even (perhaps more worryingly) many of those who think they do. Anyone who thinks threading isn't hard doesn't understand it.
People expect things to happen in the order they wrote them, and they implicitly assume that everything is "atomic enough" by not even considering the alternative. And I can't really blame them, it just makes sense.
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Threading is easy to understand. You just need to use them (and real-time systems) for twenty years first!
Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it. --- George Santayana (December 16, 1863 – September 26, 1952)
Those who fail to clear history are doomed to explain it. --- OriginalGriff (February 24, 1959 – ∞)
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Pfft! Nobody's got that much time. I'll just kick off twenty threads and do it in parallel. Next year, I'll be the local threading expert.
What is this talk of release? I do not release software. My software escapes leaving a bloody trail of designers and quality assurance people in its wake.
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harold aptroot wrote: In all fairness though, threads are hard.
Agreed. But I'm referring to the simpler end where you just need to post to the GUI thread without having to worry about synchronization, signaling etc.
And that's just an example. My point is that people don't put any effort in and just demand answers which they get (reputation++) which doesn't really help them beyond their immediate need and actively degrades the quality of the Q&As. There's little of interest in there for experienced developers, reputation aside, and it wasn't always like that.
Regards,
Rob Philpott.
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Rob Philpott wrote: and it wasn't always like that.
It wasn't? I don't really remember QA being any other way. The forums, yes, but not QA. But perhaps I'm remembering it wrong, that sort of thing does happen.
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No you're not, I had the pre-QA days in mind...
Regards,
Rob Philpott.
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Threads are easy. What's hard is dealing with interactions between threads, and particularly interactions where both sides need write access to the same stuff.
Unfortunately in the real world threading code tends to be dealing with solving a problem and posting results so this hard area is something we almost always need. But I think it's better to at least know where the hard bit is.
In this case the shared resource that needs writing to is the UI (or, better, the data model that the UI is bound to).
The trouble is though, with a lot of the people that ask these questions, if you do explain the real problem they're having and raise some of the issues in this subthread, they just won't understand it. They're just after copypasta and that's what gets the 'accepted, 5' ... so there's an incentive for people to post mostly-working snippets instead of meaningful answers.
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Rob Philpott wrote: It gets asked time and time again and yet is so very basic.
Same goes for setting the parent on a form, reading from a database, handling exceptions.. da list goes on.
Rob Philpott wrote: Or even more radical, buy a book and learn a bit about the subject?
Someone who learnt to code is too expensive; hire a trainee, and let them work on a product before they get a chance to learn anything. Next, send them to this forum.
Since health-care is equally expensive, I expect the same MO to be introduced there within a few years. Have your gut repaired by a doc that it is "a beginner and very new to the subject". If you're lucky it will be an agile project, meaning that the deadline will pass quickly.
Rob Philpott wrote: Oh yes, reputation points.
I like to think that most of us are here simlpy to learn things from others, or to help others.
..and yes, each question can be answered using enough research. If you take your statement to the extreme, then CodeProject would have been redundant. Why explain anything that can be learned?
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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Eddy Vluggen wrote: ..and yes, each question can be answered using enough research. If you take your statement to the extreme, then CodeProject would have been redundant.
That's only if you really take it to the extreme. There's a difference, imo at least, between posting questions that can be answered just by googling the title, and things that you could 'research' by doing a course, but isn't just a question with a simple code snippet answer you should have found.
For example if you post "How should I manage load balancing on a web server?", that's not something you can just go and look up and find the 'right' answer. Discussion forums like CP are invaluable for those deeper questions.
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BobJanova wrote: That's only if you really take it to the extreme.
..but where does one draw the line then?
Topics described in a how-to? How about "data providers", is that a topic where you cannot look up the answer?
Bastard Programmer from Hell
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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Eddy Vluggen wrote: Have your gut repaired by a doc that it is "a beginner and very new to the subject". If you're lucky it will be an agile project, meaning that the deadline will pass quickly.
Now that's a scary thought. Surgery performed with agile methodologies. I do NOT want to hear the doctor talk about "refactoring." 
Marc
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