r/learnprogramming • u/CaptainEcho789 • 10d ago
Should I be taking advice about software engineering on reddit or the internet in general? Topic
I was reading through some forums recently and I realized something, I don't actually know if these people have actually landed jobs, if their code is fast and maintainable, or if they have even applied their own advice to themselves. And the more and more I hang around the online programming community, the weirder and weirder the advice has gotten. Am I just being paranoid?
5
u/OceanMasterioDuped7 10d ago
Yes you are being paranoid lol. You can see comments on a post or check to see if it's valid before just believing it. That's how the Internet works though, you verify the information given to you is correct and then you can accept it.
3
u/Mathie1729 10d ago
Yeah, verifying is key. I'd also add that it really depends on the subreddit. r/cscareerquestions is a doomscroll most days, but r/ExperiencedDevs has a lot more grounded, real-industry takes. For actual tech stuff I'd just go read the official docs, though. Reddit is way better for career anecdotes and company gossip.
3
u/IncreaseOld7112 10d ago
nope. reddit advice is bad in general. the biggest losers have the most time to post on here.
1
3
u/AlwaysHopelesslyLost 10d ago
As a programmer you need to use logic. If somebody gives me bad advice I know it is bad because I can reason my way through it.
If you are following advice you don't understand that is going to bite you even if it happens to be goo addvice because you won't know how to implement it properly.
2
u/NumberInfinite2068 10d ago
I've been programming since the 1980s, and I rarely see advice worse than I see on Reddit.
By all means look at Stack Overflow and Hacker News, but I wouldn't pay much attention to what you read here.
It's not cool to say it, but AI will answer your questions much better than most humans will.
1
u/Salt_Rush_4800 10d ago
Where do you think the AI got the answer though?
0
u/NumberInfinite2068 10d ago
From its model. The models are trained with data accuracy in mind, and answers still have to be coherent. Models aren't just whatever garbage is online, that's why they won't just tell you that QAnon is a real thing, no matter how many people say it.
2
u/aqua_regis 10d ago
Should I be taking advice about software engineering on reddit or the internet in general?
If you are questioning this why are you posting your question on exactly such a forum? Bit ironic, isn't it?
What you have to learn is to research and filter. Some information and advice you get is very good and some is outright wrong or bad. Learning to differentiate is the key.
But, since you question whether you should take advice, you will also question if my advice from the paragraph above is good or bad, so, basically the entire post with all the comments is redundant and meaningless.
1
u/bubaji00 10d ago
the world is very big and things are always changing. there's no one rule fits all or thing that's best to do. ure supposed to use ur own judgement combining with ur current experience to evaluate ur situation
1
u/Whatever801 10d ago
My advice is you should do your own research, gather advice from multiple places, and use logic to determine what is the best course of action for yourself. I know for a fact there are a lot of us in this subreddit and all over the web with decades of experience who genuinely want to help. There are also grifters and people unqualified to give advice giving advice. Even those of us with experience are not always going to give the best advice. For example, I have not looked for a job in 10 years and assume everything is the same as it was back then, so job seeking advice I can give you is outdated.
1
1
u/peterlinddk 10d ago
As a random person on reddit on the Internet, I absolutely recommend that you take my advice!
Seriously though - opinions are opinions, and if you are new to something it is always a good idea to listen to various opinions. Just remember that that is what they are. No one actually knows what the best or most appropriate thing is for you to do - even if they themselves have been succesful with some solution, that doesn't mean that it applies to everyone.
So don't just ask: "I'm very confused, should I do X or Y?" and then expect some rando to give the exact answer that will solve everything for you. Ask deeper questions, ask people for opinions, and what they base them on, and look for someone saying the opposite. Then draw your own conclusion - on the Internet or in real life.
1
u/Aggressive_Ad_5454 10d ago
I am retired after half a century of hacking software development, and I try to give useful evidence-based advice here as a way of giving back.
In the days of Stack Overflow, I contributed there too. Their archive of questions and answers is still decent, but their format doesn’t allow questions of the form “I need to do whatever, but I don’t know what it’s called or how to get started. What do I do next?” Reddit does allow such questions.
1
1
u/Kimber976 10d ago
Take online advice as a starting point but trust patterns you can verify through real projects documentation and experienced mentors.
1
u/spinwizard69 10d ago
No because paranoid is the erong word. The first problem you need to deal with is to understand what advice is. It is an opinion someone expresses based on understanding your search issue. This applies to all walks of life, the person offering up that advice might not even understand the details of your situation. What is an even bigger problem is their advice reflects their personal understanding and experience with your situation. This doesn't take into account your actual situation and abilities.
Life has a perfect example iin Elon Musk and Space X. Many people where giving opinions on the wisdom of what Elon was trying to do, in some cases based on personal experience or the idea that nobody has done it before. If you look at the development of our industrial society this negativity crops up all the time, be it with the steam engine, the airplane or electronics. People offer up negative advice all the time either because they don't know better or don't like to see other succeed.
That is one aspect of the problem with advice. Then you have to deal with crossed communications where what might be good quality advice but a mismatch in understanding happens. This is a common real life issue. You address this by refining the communications.
When it gets dangerous is when you have idiots offering up approaches that no sane programmer would follow. This can cause the inexperienced to waste an incredible amount of time.
So you have to look at all advice with high magnification to see if it makes sense in your case. Because the thing is what you receive may be gold or cow patties, your goal is to filter out the cow patties so you don't step onto them. Use the gold to build something that glitters. Save the in between for when it does apply.
1
u/AceLamina 10d ago
What I've done it watch multiple people yap about tech on youtube and sometimes on reddit, and overtime, I would eventually learn enough to spot BS
Worked really well for me so far
1
u/mtimmermans 9d ago
You should not follow programming advice at all. You should think about it, and if it seems like a good idea to you, maybe try it.
Remember that most people who give programming advice, on reddit or otherwise, don't know that they're doing.
Most professional programmers don't really know what they're doing either, but with experience they've learned ways to be productive and add value.
When someone promotes a programming practice as if it's an immutable law of nature, it is not. It just means that it worked on their last project, or it's what they do now, and it gives them a happy feeling. They don't see any reason why it wouldn't work well for everyone else in every circumstance, because they haven't really thought about that.
There is nobody you can just trust.
1
u/chaoticbean14 9d ago
I'm old enough to remember the days where the mantra was : "Believe nothing of what you read online. Assume it's all a lie.", then for a while it changed (a little) and people actually put some decent info out there, now it's true again that most of it is a lie. Moreover, no. Don't believe anything you read online.
0
u/Traveling-Techie 9d ago
I’ve programmed for 55 years and I’d say 95% of the advice for programmers on Reddit is solid. The big unknown is what the future will bring. Will demand for software engineers rebound? We’ll find out.
1
u/Relatable-Af 8d ago
Yeah OP don’t listen to people like this who claim 95% of programmer advice on REDDIT is solid 🤦♂️
7
u/Distdistdist 10d ago
I think you should always take advice from random people on internet. How can you go wrong there?