> How many times are people going to complain about no-brainer questions
> being posted to the list. The fact of the matter is people are going to
> post things on the list without reading the manual or the FAQ. It goes
> with the territory. It annoys me too, but there is no good solution for
> the problem. There is the fact that a lot of people are new and don't
> really know where to go to find answers. Even if they go to the web site,
> they still may not know that they need to be looking for information on
> naming variables with variables or that fopen opens a file or whatever.
>
> K E I T H V A N C E
I think the argument has less to do with people asking questions about PHP
and how it works, and more about people asking basica programming questions
without knowing it. Fundamental programming concepts, like the scope of a
variable, passing by reference or by value, or even looping are things
newbie's simply do not understand. Why? Because they don't know they need
to learn the concepts and theories of programming before learning to
program. It sounds odd, but that is the way it is.
People asking questions about how a loop works are not usually asking how a
PHP loop works. The same for arrays. They are really saying: "This is the
first real programming language I am out to learn, and I don't understand
the concept behind a For/Next Loop." This isn't a bad thing, heck, we were
all newbies at one point, and in a sense, we are all newbies at something.
I think the argument is that their are many people who don't want to learn
how and why a For/Next Loop works, but instead simply want someone to fix
the problem for them. That isn't programming. Programming (and yes, I
know, PHP is technically a scripting language, but lets not jump that fence
as well) is about trial and error, logic, and creativity, but most
importantly, problem solving. Most of the newbies get into PHP expecting a
tutorial on every topic. If they can't find a tutorial on how to print out
5 numbers, they expect someone to show them how to do it. They don't try
and solve the problem themselves, and that is a problem. I don't mind
assisting where I can, however, I don't like rewriting a script for someone
when they don't even take the time to try and learn the fundamentals. Most
newbies I have met fall into two categories. The majority start out wanting
to learn PHP because someone said it was easy to learn, which it is, from a
programmers point of view. However, when in the second week of learning
their first programming language they can't program that PHP Database
Content Management System with Instant Yahoo News Retrival complete with
User Database, Forums, and Real Time Foo, they start getting upset and say
that PHP sucks. Those same people may also complain because they can't find
a tutorial on how to create a Forum Database, and all they can find are
tutorials on the basics of Database Design.
I think this is the real problem. Try to run before they have learned to
crawl and walk.
Jason Lotito
www.NewbieNetwork.net
Where those who can, teach;
and those who can, learn.
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