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I can see 3 reasons...
- First and foremost unpleasant online people is absolutely NOT exclusive to techies. So much so there is a well known word for some of those people. Trolls! Rudeness online is an all too common behavior. And you don't need to be a troll to be victim of occasional fit of anger.
- Technical people are naturally pedantic and arrogant. Having worked hard to acquire knowledge (at least most of us) we fill naturally entitled to have a better opinion than the rest. It makes sense. But communication often fail the most knowledgeable and painful lack of communication ensue....
- Having the same stupid question asked again and again. Occasionally people who make no effort themselves and insist for fully baked product to land in their hungry lazy lap... lead to helpfulness fatigue... and anger...
In a way angry behavior might simply due to the lack of social skill to endure what could be enormous social pressure at times. An all too human and understandable failing.
In a way, it takes 2 to communicate. And the fault, if there is one, lies at both end of the line.
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I think we can add a couple more on to this list:
1. This may be a stereotype or a generalization, but I suspect the tech field appeals to a certain type of person with a certain type of brain chemistry. As an example, introverts, individuals with social anxieties, and/or Asperger's. Often these people don't have the best social skills. I know I fall under this grouping.
2. There's an inherent degree of competition in our field that leaves many developers feeling insecure in their position and/or knowledge (see "imposter syndrome"). It's quite likely that these developers use the Q&A model to (verbally) cut down the competition and prove their superiority.
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Interesting points ...
You know what? Halfway through I wanted to disagree... But somehow you convinced me that they have some relevance! 
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YOU $#%#@@ N00B YOU POSTED IN THE WRONG SECTION!!! (Try The Lounge[^] next time) 
Well alright, I can forgive you for that, since you do make a very good point 
I have the same experience, you make one little mistake (or sometimes none) and people go about calling you names, you're clearly a beginner and shouldn't write about what you don't know, that sort of thing.
Luckily I got a lot of good feedback as well, so I'm guessing there's still hope.
That said, I don't think it's really a problem that's unique for our business.
Just read some comments on YouTube and you'll see my point
You'd expect better from programmers because you're a programmer yourself and you tend to think we're better than that.
Unfortunately programmers are just people too.
I guess people are just a-holes 
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What you say is simply all too true for so many 'technical types'.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. - Liber AL vel Legis 1:40, Aleister Crowley
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Agreed!
What then really annoys me is when you are learning something and search on Google, the top results are "Dude! just use Google!!".
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Well said! I am sure that the number of exceptionally rude responses we all see, especially on platforms such as stack overflow is down to the "arms length" anonymity that the media provides alongside some individuals with particularly poor social skills.
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Personally, this is tough.
As someone who used to teach, embarrassment is a powerful teacher, but not always the best approach.
I don't do it (IMO), but I will call out people for the questionable intelligence in their question from time to time, but only if I am providing a real answer, or I have something to add.
It reminds me of the "Yeah, Me too!" or "Agreed" responses. People are treating this like a conversation, and wanting to chime in. Most of those are gone these days, but back in the alt.whatever era, OMG there was a lot of noise from the "me too" responses.
Now, I am not in the position of HAVING to answer these questions. I am sure after 3 years of answering questions of similar nature, I would get there.
What we need is an AI review system that reviews the answer, determines the tone. Compares to the tone the responder usually uses, and prompts them "John, this seems more abusive than usual... Are you having a bad day? I see you did this exactly 28 days ago... you might want to check your hormones (LOL)"
Honestly though, and AI review of posting/emails might be useful (better than a spell checker).
Warning: "Using the word IDIOT and BOSS in the same sentence is usually career limiting!"
Bu I do agree. We need a bit more civility. But we also need thicker skins. In the end,
did you get the answer you wanted, and did you learn something. Move on. Ignore the haters,
eventually they will join the "me too!" replies
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Kirk 10389821 wrote: As someone who used to teach, embarrassment is a powerful teacher, but not always the best approach
I've yet to see embarrassment ever be a useful teaching tool. All I've ever seen it teach people, is not to ask you their questions, which is a pretty sad state of affairs if you're their teacher.
We can program with only 1's, but if all you've got are zeros, you've got nothing.
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Interesting. Maybe we have a different definition of embarrassing.
I encouraged my students to participate FULLY in class, and be WILLING to be WRONG out loud.
I asked questions, sometimes trick ones. I would get them to raise their hands, scream out
the answers, etc. And then "educate" them.
The point is that you believe/know what you believe/know. It is when that collides with new facts and you realize it aint right, that you truly learn.
Yes, it is embarrassing to be wrong. But it is more important GET IT than it is to be afraid of being embarrassed or being wrong while you are learning.
I was embarrassed in college when I claimed that I could "prove" a program was "correct". The teacher set me up. He then asked "You are making an assumption that the hardware is not at fault".
Literally a couple of months later, the Pentium Division Error reared its ugly head.
I think people spend too much time trying to pretend they are better than they actually are. When learning, making mistakes, BIG ONES, is naturally. Helping the students face it, and LAUGH at it is embarrassing for them. But I believe it helps them.
You might have meant the OLD school: Where someone is insulted, dejected and ridiculed for making a mistake. I am willing to admit I was 22 when I learned where the Middle East was! It was embarrassing to ask that question in a room full of college kids, but I remember the event to this day! And the teacher handled it very well...
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Kirk 10389821 wrote: Maybe we have a different definition of embarrassing
You are right, we were operating on different definitions. I was using the "Old school" definition, and was surprised someone would advocate that .
What you're describing, well, all I can say is, I want to be in your classes.
We can program with only 1's, but if all you've got are zeros, you've got nothing.
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True story. On another site, I was an MVP. They sent me a mug. I actually felt guilty for "earning" it because it was by answering the same question over and over and over and over and over.
It gets annoying that the questioner cannot be bothered to search for an answer to his question before asking. Even searching can help him better formulate his questions, since he can say why other people's solutions don't work for him.
I won't deny occasionally becoming exasperated with questioners and I have pretty much stopped answering questions. But you have to realize, the problem goes both ways.
Brent
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Brent,
How far did you go to retrain them?
At an old company, we had Free 800 Support, but it was supposed to be after using the help system.
Nobody would check the help system because we were there, on the ready. I retrained the help staff to forcibly walk the users through finding all known solutions in the help system. Then we would have the users read back the short version of the answer "This situation can be fixed in 4 steps...".
It worked, within 6 months, our call volume dropped to manageable levels.
In this case, I would reply with things like:
If you searched for X+Y+Z, these results would have helped you
If you searched for A+B+C, these results would have helped you
So, I think any of those above answers will solve your problem. If not, ask again with more details.
==
The concept is training them to think for themselves.
Also, if they realize you are going to answer the questions that way, they WILL search first! (Eventually)
And thanks for helping others out!
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I think there are two types of programmers. Ones that want answers to questions and don't care how they get them and ones that want to solve a problem and want to understand the solution. I have been programming for about 15 years and although I do look for inspiration on forums and google i have very seldom posted a request for help on a forum. I would rather get some background knowledge and formulate my own solution. That way i understand how it works and the next time i am faced with a similar problem i will remember how to formulate a solution.
I think where some of this anger and impatience comes from is when someone asks for a turnkey solution to a problem and doesn't really have any interest in putting forth any effort to explore the problem on their own. They just want some code that does something. This type of behavior is a bit annoying. Mostly because that same person may be back to ask the same question next month because they don't realize they already had the solution(or something very close) because they didn't understand the code they put in their project. Which is another problem altogether.
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Well said. I've been in the programming profession for 40 years and have seen plenty of moronic behavior among developers everywhere I've gone. This primadonna attitude developers seem to carry around has no place among people. Lest we forget, regardless of how technically inclined our field may be, the end purpose of it is to serve people!
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Behavior is a consequence of learned and subconscious behavior; choice and automatic response; knowledge or ignorance; the context of the event (in a group or alone, etc); and the amount of will power and self discipline (or lack of) that a person has. If the permutations of all the degrees of all those variables were computed, it would result in an extremely large number of possible outcomes.
You seem to be focusing on the issue of choice (free will) and good vs. bad. The question of, "Why do people behave badly?" is something that has probably been pondered by lots of people for a long time. The goal of decreasing bad behavior, may be a factor in why religion exists. (Sin. Need for hope. Morality. Rules. Motivation to do good E.g. you'll go to heaven or hell.)
I don't think that the core of the issue here is limited to programmers.
If anyone ponders the question of "Why?" deeply enough, sooner or later you'll need to think about whether the human race has the collective ability to control it's own (our) destiny, or are we doomed to factors that are beyond our control? You are appealing to whomever will listen, to take control of their individual behavior. And it works. ( To some degree).
If the human race is not able to control it's own destiny, then we obviously need a "savior". The problem with that situation may be that we relinquish our fate into a belief system that ultimately may not save us. I'd rather not "role the dice". (Control or relinquish your influence on the future)
Hopefully, anyone reading this doesn't think it's too bizarre, and that this thread really isn't about saving the world, we just want a few programmers to behave a little better on a forum. But, only so many doors open, and only so many opportunities present themself. And I'm not so sure that the topic is being adequately discussed on a larger scale to insure a good outcome. So, please excuse my attempt to turn this into a bigger issue, but I think it's worth the risk.
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Rude online behavior is caused by the same mentality behind drive-by shooters, road rage, and suicide bombers. It's easy to jump to the worst conclusion about someone else when you are not interacting face-to-face. Don't judge until you walk a mile in the other person's shoes. Otherwise, you are a weak-minded self-absorbed weenie.
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What you have to say has merit. However, I can understand some of the attitude of those who genuinely want to help and find themselves bombarded with requests that paraphrase to the following:
1. Please do my homework for me so that I don't have to lift a finger.
2. I'm too lazy to read and I haven't even tried any coding to solve my problem.
3. Please send codez. IOW, spend an hour of time dealing with my problem for free.
After a while you tend to get cynical. As for myself, I'm always willing to help someone who is obviously trying to understand and who appears to have just missed a subtle point. I used to offer help a lot, but I eventually got tired of the repetition. I've been at this since 1968.
As an aside, the most common legitimate help request I ever had to answer is: "My program got a segment violation for no obvious reason. I've looked and looked and I can't find the problem." The answer was almost invariably:
"Check your memory management and buffer usage. If you have stepped past the end of an allocated buffer, or if you have used a 'freed' pointer you have probably trashed the heap. Cause and effect can be widely separated in time."
Some things never change when it comes to helping beginning programmers.
Fletcher Glenn
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"Mental bullying" is sometimes a consequence of the "bully" (i.e. nerd) having been picked on by thicker jocks back in high school; what goes around comes around.
Blame the jocks. 
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There are a few points that are relevant here.
First, a recent study found that more experienced people are more closed-minded about new or different concepts in their field. Further, other people thought that was justified because of their experience. So, some of the resistance to new concepts comes from that area. It has always been the case that to make major advances in a field of knowledge it is necessary for the older generation to die off or retire. This is a problem in every field. All you can do about it is to try to be aware of the tendency in yourself and avoid it whenever possible.
A non-computer example is set theory which allows a set to be a member of itself. This is accomplished by removing the Foundation Axiom (which explicitly prohibits it) and tweaking the definition of identity. It has been shown that such a set theory is consistent if and only if normal set theory is consistent. But, it allows so much more to be done, is a complete superset of normal set theory and avoids many problems. But, the older generation either completely rejects it, or sidelines it as a curiosity when those working in the field should have been all over it.
Second, sometimes a "package" result is really required because the effort of developing it yourself is prohibitive. As a personal example, I am extremely good with mathematics. However, it has been several decades since I last used Calculus or Differential Equations (I use mathematics daily, just not in that area). So, if I need something that is expressed or derived using those tools, I would need to spend weeks or months coming back up to speed on the needed mathematical tools. When experienced people in a field can provide a relative simple set of rules or guidelines, or a canned generic solution that is definitely worthwhile. It is not the same as trying to get someone to do your homework.
An example here is the FFT (Fast Fourier Transform) or Wave Packets. It is not necessary to understand the derivation of the transform when all you need is an algorithm. It is possible to understand the underlying concepts without wading through the mathematics. Suppose you want to transform an audio file in some way. All you really need is an algorithm. Your task has almost certainly been done many times before. There are many people with a solid understanding of the mathematics and of the algorithm. They can easily provide assistance that is extremely valuable to a fellow programmer that just needs to add a minor feature to a product. Management might allow a couple of days, but not months for something like that. So here, a "package" solution is exactly what is required.
Finally, no matter what, posts should be polite, grammatical, spelled correctly and written as if you were sitting down with a quill pen and parchment to write a letter. Courtesy hurts no one. Posting to a forum, sending a text or writing an email is fundamentally no different that writing a letter with a quill pen. Only the technology is different.
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Marcus, people are stupid. And lazy. And don't even try to solve problem - they cry like a child - "mom, heeelp!". It's infantile behaviour and what's sad they continue to behave like that even being 40 y/o! So I don't allow lazy morons to WASTE MY TIME. If question is simple, GOOGLE IT! Right now. Time is priceless and we should save it for bigger things!
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In my opinion: On-line postings tend to bring out the worst in many people for some reason. Some times, because we can't see the facial expression or hear the tone of voice, the posting becomes negative even when not intended that way. The fact that we've now gotten to where some don't even use words, they've gone back to the per-literate days of pictographs (emojis and the like), is a major problem. They can't take the time to give a complete, unhurried answer while "keeping a civil tongue" in their heads. E-mail and postings tend to be done in a manner not consistent with proper written correspondence; they seem to encourage errors of grammar, spelling, usage and a lack of politeness. The writers appear to have not made it past 2nd or 3rd grade English class.
However, I've been in the computer industry for 50 years and can state that people displaying all the negatives you mention have been behaving in those ways for at least as long as I've been involved. In fact even longer. My father started with these beasts in 1934 (Electronic Accounting Machines) and told of unpleasant, mean spirited, uncooperative, and unsharing people even then.
I fully second your request for civil, cooperative behavior by those in all areas of computing.
Charles Wolfe
C. Wolfe Software Engineering
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Hi,
Out of interest has anyone added google analytics to an article they have written ? I have generated some html using the google analytics web site and was curious how to insert it into an article. Or is this thing frowned upon/banned ?
Here is the HTML
<script>
(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){i['GoogleAnalyticsObject']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){
(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),
m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)
})(window,document,'script','//www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js','ga');
ga('create', 'UA-69072944-4', 'auto');
ga('send', 'pageview');
</script>
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Custom scripts in articles tends to be frowned upon. You'd have to seek permission from the site owners to allow you to include it.
This space for rent
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Sorry - no scripts in articles unless those scripts are specifically to illustrate a Javscript / CSS technique (and even then an editor would need to do it)
cheers
Chris Maunder
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