this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2023
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Programmer Humor

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[–] [email protected] 123 points 11 months ago (4 children)

I learned so much over the years abusing Cunningham's.

Could have a presentation for the C-suite for a major company, post some tenuous claim related to what I intended to present on, and have people with PhDs in the subject citing papers correcting me with nuances that would make it into the final presentation.

It's one of the key things I miss about Reddit. The scale of Lemmy just doesn't have the same rate and quality of expertise jumping in to correct random things as a site with 100x the users.

[–] [email protected] 62 points 11 months ago (4 children)

The major problem with reddit is that you could never really trust the credentials of the person you were talking to. They might have been PhDs or they might have been 13 year olds who just learned to Google. It amazes me how many times I saw a highly upvoted comment posted about a subject that I knew a lot about, but was just so blatantly wrong.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yeah voting on content has nothing to do with quality and everything to do with feelings.

People just vote for their side of any discussion, regardless of validity.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago

Only if it's something controversial. If it's something technical with no political affiliation, people vote for answers that sound right. Thankfully Cunningham's usually comes to the rescue on time.

[–] Feyter 12 points 11 months ago

To be fair this is not a Reddit thing and it can be found in the fediverse too. I can remember some of such situations where a person just posted wrong stuff but in a very confident way. I was able to prove him wrong later but nobody cared anymore.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago (1 children)

cunningham's law is intended to be used recursively

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

I know what you're trying to do, but that is not the case /hj

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)

As long as they provide appropriate sources then it doesn't really matter who they are

[–] [email protected] 18 points 11 months ago (2 children)

There's no clear winner between a 13yo who can use a search engine and a crusty old PhD who can't keep up with changing times.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago

Especially if you move 0.1% away from that PhD's particular specialty.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago

I mean, unironically exactly why people think LLMs are smart.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago

Unless the thing falls under non-commercial electronics or computing. The community on here is skewed towards that for obvious reasons.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago

I always kind of felt like those voices began to be drowned out the more and more popular reddit became. You're correct about Lemmy's scale, but there is certainly a sweet spot. I'm happy knowing Lemmy hasn't yet reached its own, and reddit's is long gone. I'm happier here and it's likely only going to get better.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

Errmmmmh achstually.., lol

[–] [email protected] 100 points 11 months ago (5 children)

i do the same thing. its called Murphy's law :D

[–] [email protected] 135 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I know what you're doing but I can't help myself. It's Cunningham's law.

[–] [email protected] 55 points 11 months ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 32 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Cole's Law: if there's a salad, I want that one.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Brannigan’s Love is like Brannigan’s cole slaw, wet and chunky.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

The spirit is willing but the flesh is spongy and bruised.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Took me a minute to realize this was a pun... shame on me.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago

Cole's law is best with a burger.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago

I'll be honest you almost for me

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Ahem, it’s called Poe’s law

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago
[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Nah thats called laws of thermodynamics! And they were made up by Elvis together with is homy Obama (the guy without last name) who were known for their contributions to biology

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Are you talking about uncle Obama, well known for his banana?

[–] [email protected] 35 points 11 months ago (1 children)

imo it's not that correcting feels better than helping but rather it's easier to correct someone than draft an answer of your own.

[–] suy 28 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Sometimes that's part of the issue (or the whole deal), but sometimes it's not even that.

Sometimes it's that someone asked something difficult and elaborate to answer, which has been answered a ton of times, and it's tedious to answer again and again. But if someone answers with misinformation or even straight FUD, then one needs to feel the urge to correct that to prevent misinformation.

I suffered that with questions in r/QtFramework. Tons of licensing questions, repeated over and over, from people who have not bothered to read a bit about such a well known and popular license as LGPL. Then someone who cares little for the nuance answers something heavy handed, and paints a wrong picture. Then I can't let the question pass. I need to correct the shitty answer. :-(

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

I would say that if someone asks a difficult question it's often difficult because it's very general, so you don't have any specific point to answer that you know will satisfy the person asking.

On the other hand, if someone is writing misinformation then they provide specific statements which still may be difficult to correct but you have those anchor points you can refer to.

So I guess the thing here is that if someone, after asking a question, writes a BS answer they actually refine their question and narrow its scope, thus making it easier to answer.

I usually see broad questions about rather simple things unanswered, but very specific yet difficult questions answered

[–] [email protected] 29 points 11 months ago (2 children)

ACTually, they're still helping you, so it would be better to say correcting = helping.

Sincerely,

Definitely not Gollum's alt.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

Don't asks us, precious.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

Nicely corrected, thanks.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 11 months ago

My coworkers had a hard time picking resturaunts, so I started recommending McDonald's for work parties, and then everyone else started chiming in with actually good ideas.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago

This is like putting a $10 price tag on a free sidewalk item so someone will steal it.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago

It's an older meme, sir, but it checks out. I was just about to upvote it.

[–] lowleveldata 6 points 11 months ago (5 children)

Who post programming questions on Reddit? Are you looking for answers in meme format?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago

reddit was/is much more than a meme site

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Honestly, meme communities' comments could have some of the best in-depth discussions. Memes tend to provide a great launching point for discussions. A sort of prompt that everyone can coalesce around to talk in a serious manner about the subject.

/r/dndmemes and /r/programmerhumor were two great examples.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

And they're still pretty good on Lemmy!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Omg I didn’t even realise which community I was in as I made that comment!

But yeah, this one and [email protected] are both great.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Where would you post them?

[–] lowleveldata 3 points 11 months ago (5 children)
[–] h_a_r_u_k_i 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

DUPLICATED, CLOSED, etc.

Joke aside, for an open question I'd prefer posting on Reddit/Lemmy/forums to have an open answer.

SO is too strict on its policy.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

There are serious programming subs. However, I find that those tend to debate/discuss solutions/approaches moreso than the actual code itself, although that's not unheard of either. For actual coding questions, I want to say there's a "learn programming" sub that has those, but they're pretty strict about just doing people's homework for them (those posts tend to be pretty obvious).

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Almost like that xkcd joke...

[–] xoggy 2 points 11 months ago

I was trying to remember where I read this originally. Thank you.

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