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[cyberRobot]

...I absolutely hated those people who called me a “newbie” and patted me on the back rather than actually teaching me something. It's condescending bullshit.

 

Sorry about that. I guess I don't typically get offended by things like that. I apologize for any offense.

 

With that said, I think it's more offensive to dismiss someone's work just because it isn't perfect. Note that I'm not talking about the importance of using secure code or switching to PDO or whatever. I'm just growing tired of people coming here with a specific question. And then they get slammed because their code is missing such and such a feature.

 

What are we saying to people who are learning. They may have put a lot of effort into their script. They may have been exhilarated by what they were able to accomplish. But then they are told to start over. That their code is completely worthless.

 

Now, I'm not saying we need to hold everyone's hand. But we also don't need to bombard them with everything that's "wrong" with the script. They will learn eventually, hopefully.

[benanamen]

When they come to this site it is our opportunity to teach them correctly. As expert professionals I would even go so far as to say our responsibility to do it. If we don't, who will? Should we just cross our fingers and hope they learn it eventually somewhere else? I think not.

 

Anyone with a real programmer mindset is going to want to know everything that is wrong with what they are doing so they can fix it and become better programmers. If they don't care and just want it to work we are not helping anyone and just wasting our time.

Edited November 21, 2016 by benanamen

[cyberRobot]

When they come to this site it is our opportunity to teach them correctly.

 

I don't disagree. But is there no happy medium? Are the only boxes I get to check are "junk code" and "perfect code". How about helping people one step at a time. If they come back to learn more, great!

 

 

Should we just cross our fingers and hope they learn it eventually somewhere else? I think not.

 

It sounds like you're taking on too much responsibility. You can't force people to learn. Sometimes people need to make their own mistakes.

Edited November 21, 2016 by cyberRobot

[benanamen]

It sounds like you're taking on too much responsibility. You can't force people to learn.

 

Actually not. If they want to learn, I have no problem spending the time to teach them. 

 

If they don't want to learn, I don't waste my time on them as you can see from my history of posts. If they show up with mysql_*, I send them to a good PDO tutorial so they can come back asking about the right problems they may have. If they just want their obsolete code "to work", I don't waste my time.

Edited November 21, 2016 by benanamen

[cyberRobot]

Actually not. If they want to learn, I have no problem spending the time to teach them. 

 

If they don't want to learn, I don't waste my time on them as you can see from my history of posts. If they show up with mysql_*, I send them to a good PDO tutorial so they can come back asking about the right problems they may have. If they just want their obsolete code "to work", I don't waste my time.

 

I have no problem with that. Your help is appreciated around here. And I mean that with all sincerity.

 

 

What I'm trying to get at, is that the OP asked the following question:

 

Trying to get search results to show first name and last name when a search query is entered but I can't get it to show at all.

 

And the first response was to throw everything out, use PDO, fix security holes, etc. Do you not see how frustrating that could be to someone who is looking for a specific answer? Right or wrong, the OP probably just wants to know how to get the search query working. Once that's done, they can worry about SQL injection attacks, etc.

 

Granted, the OP could tune everyone out after the problem is solved. But there is no guarantee they are not doing that already. Perhaps they are just playing along to avoid confrontation. And yes I've done that when I first started out.

Edited November 21, 2016 by cyberRobot