Post programming questions online and you’ll inevitably get someone saying, “don’t reinvent the wheel.” Why is it so bad to step outside the box?
A few years back, one of my old high school teachers told me that none of his students asked him any questions during an AP math class. That they all just sat there like robots.
And when you question systems of authority and power structures, people always bring up, if you didn’t do anything wrong, you have nothing to hide. I literally just got called a Nazi for thinking it odd that Lemmy moderators should be able to limit your interactions from other Lemmy instances.
By keeping them indoors all the time, have we raised a generation of kids who question nothing? This isn’t normal, people. You’re supposed to question things, especially those with power over you. Humans are self-serving. That means your moderators, betters, and superiors will always serve their own interests over yours.
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Post programming questions online and you’ll inevitably get someone saying, “don’t reinvent the wheel.” Why is it so bad to step outside the box?
This is totally different… That’s not deference to authority or conformity, that’s fundamental best practices
If you want to do more than play with code puzzles, the first question you should ask is “how have others solved this problem”. And the second should be “how have others approached similar problems”
Code is castles upon castles built of sand… Even the language you use and the rock that runs it are entirely manmade. Coding is a fundamentally collaborative process, and if you want to innovate you need to understand how and why things were done the way they are first.
Otherwise you’re going to write really shit code, even if you’re the cleverest coder to ever live, the code will be shit because it’ll be a huge pain in the ass to work with for everyone else. And probably for yourself too, once your realize why things are done a certain way and understand that it’s usually there’s been a ton of thought and discussion that led it to being the way things are done
If you’re asking questions without comparing the proposed benefits of your new solution to the normal approach, you’re not yet prepared to enter the discussion on how things should be done
So of course the correct response should always be to remind you that you should first learn how others did it. That never goes away, it’s something we remind each other constantly even at the deeper levels of understanding
It’s good life advice too. Humans aren’t nearly as creative as we like to think, as a species we hardly ever have truly new ideas. The way our creative process works is by rearranging the concepts we already know in new ways. If you want to be an innovator, you should be constantly finding wisdom in others and the world around you
As for the deference to authority? That’s because we live in uncertain times and people are scared. It’s more comforting to think someone knows what they’re doing instead of acknowledging the truth… We have very big problems that we are not confronting as a species in any meaningful way.
That tendency as a species is one of those very big problems in fact
My personal takes which im sure will be contentious. Not sure what “this generation” pertains to btw A) Were just more open about despising working so the most efficient way to get there with the least effort is the best way B) No money, no relationships, no hope for future, why bother with anything else C) anyone at any point can just become an Op and what you do could be immortalized on the internet forever and i hate to be that guy If you aren’t a white dude then that could he particularly dangerous.
Many of us do ask lots of questions but they’re more like, “Why am i trapped by a government that doesnt care about its constituents and when i try to help other people they tell me im an idiot and I chose the wrong guy snd their guy is better?” Or “Hmm will I ever buy a house?” Or “Wow im getting somewhat older will my friends ever be able to not live with their parents?”
Counterpoint: trust in American institutions is at an all-time low. This generation does not believe what they big news organizations tell them. Damn sure don’t believe in politicians anymore.
The lowest trust was politicians and news media. The highest in that survey was small business and military (what a marriage). Small businesses charge the military $35 for a screw.
Trust and asking questions are separate things. Trust is a feeling. Asking questions is a lifestyle change.
You can spend all your time reinventing a worse wheel, or you can just use the highly optimised 20th gen wheel that already exists and actually finish a project
Optimized translates to, for a single use case.
The more form you give something, the narrower its uses become. Which is why innovative sites must spend years hatching schemes to work within “optimized” wheels. It’s why Google and Amazon have both created their own databases and left SQL behind. Because SQL is optimized for a very specific use case.
Then you get into other problems, like http(s). It was optimized for one-time connections, because you connect to something, send a request, get it, then the connection closes. Which lead to the need for WebRTC – which is an entire mess of its own, trying to get around that restriction.
Optimized means a use-case became narrower and narrower over time. One of the most reinvented things in history, other than the mousetrap, is the wheel.
As with so many things, it depends on your goal.
If your goal is to make a new, never-before-seen kind of wheel, you definitionally must reinvent the wheel, but at that point, you are doing state of the art research into rolling system dynamics, and probably not hopping onto a message board to ask random strangers about it. You’re heading down the hall to your colleagues lab and consulting fellow experts in the field.
If your goal is to learn the rough outline of how a wheel works, because you want to learn to make wheeled vehicles, maybe you should ‘reinvent’ the wheel at least once, but just as an exercise, not because the wheel you reinvent will be useful. It will be cast aside anyway. You probably just need to know not to put tires on your trains or metal wheels on your F1 cars. If your goal is to reinvent the train, trust the people, who spent years and years of work, testing, reinventing, and retesting the wheel, have proven that round and metal is the way to go for train wheels, and spend your effort on making the train itself. Reinventing the wheels probably won’t make a better train and might stall out the making of the train entirely. If your goal is to get a job as a train designer, showing you know how to send specs to the wheel maker and trusting their work will get you hired where getting lost in the minutiae of designing your own unremarkable wheel will not. The people with the money want trains by the end of the day because they promised the client a week ago they’d be ready by yesterday and forgot to hire you until today.
Is there some internet rule about declarations that include criticism of generations younger than the OP? I just imagine this is coming from someone standing in their front yard, shaking a fist at the kids zipping by on ebikes and mumbling about how OP wasn’t so lazy back in their day, having to provide full pedal power as Jesus and our great nation’s Founding Fathers intended.
I know plenty of folks in generations older than mine that can go thru life glassy-eyed at times. I also help with a scout troop where I cannot get those little shits to shut up with their “why, why, why?” I challenge that you are in a bias bubble. Or maybe you’re hangry and a nice slice of avocado toast would make you feel better?
Edit: okaaaay, I was 50/50 on this being a troll but now all in. The thread in which OP was “called a Nazi” included OP protesting that can’t possibly be true because they’re an Ashkenazi jew. Ranting against younger generations, pulling the “but I’m Jewish” card, arguing for no moderation of Nazi and CSAM trash. What’s next, OP has many gay and/or black friends and they totally gave OP permission to use slurs? Someone break out the internet troll meme bingo cards.
Greater surveillance and better history/experience in surveillance?
A few years back, one of my old high school teachers told me that none of his students asked him any questions during an AP math class
Does he encourage questions?
Also, create an environment where questions would be raised? Like, letting them try out stuff or showing examples for them to play with and extend/explore?With course completion targets, they may not be having enough time to playa around with it.
Or maybe the kids are decently smart and get the explanation from the teacher(if the context of questioning is on explanations). Or use the internet to get answers.
Or they don’t get the explanation and thus can’t ask good questions and avoid asking fearing the teacher’s response.
I literally just got called a Nazi for thinking it odd that Lemmy moderators should be able to limit your interactions from other Lemmy instances.
Moderators?
Do you mean admins of instances? Admins(or if they are cool admins and the people of the instances) have the capability to choose which instances they want to interact with, right?Which instance were you talking about tho? Was it a Nazi-like one, which got you called the same?
I mean, every student in class had questions and thoughts about how the math could be manipulated when he was teaching us.
Nah, I was talking about making an alternative to Lemmy, where forums were local to each server, but your home server allowed you to login to third-party servers. That way, a balance would be created between mods being able to moderate the servers they owned and users being able to choose the servers they interacted with.
I was quickly called a Nazi, because I valued free speech (what they actually said), and would inevitably want to join Nazi groups – even though I’m Ashkenazi.
You literally said you want a mostly unmoderated online space and that there was nothing wrong with decapitation videos being available online. Unmoderated spaces often foster nazi crowds at a certain popularity, that’s why they called it a nazi platform then. Just look at how 4chan got away with being unmoderated.
No need to create a cesspool/bubble of nazis, CSAM and other vile stuff. Even without moderation there it would become a bubble after a certain time because most people would start avoiding the site due to its content.
Post programming questions online and you’ll inevitably get someone saying, “don’t reinvent the wheel.” Why is it so bad to step outside the box?
Am I reinventing the wheel when I use ext4 as a key value store instead of Redis? Or a sorted fixed-width binary file to lookup a relation instead of Sqlite?
I think for answering programming questions, the default answers are like a one-size fits all t-shirt. Yeah, they will always cover you up… but usually not “optimal.” Why is that? I think its because these are common solutions that everyone understands even though there are many ways to skin a cat.
It definitely leads to cargo culting.
Sometimes it’s a waste of time to question things.
For things like programming and math, there’s a recommended way of solving problems, because they’re proven to work. Why are you going down a rabbit hole while ignoring the obvious answer that’s staring you in the face?
You have to learn the fundamentals before you can understand when to break them.
You should be trying to break everything you’re told, as soon as you’re told it. That’s called thinking. You don’t have to voice it, but you should be trying to find exceptions to the rules as soon as a rule is presented to you.
You should have an internal feeling of the subject matter that you compare to your life experiences, and then wonder if there are exceptions to what’s being presented.
People are self-serving. And if you’re not constantly questioning what you’re told, you’re going to be under their control. Pursuing their interests.
That’s a lot of “should” statements. Ultimately people are in control of their own minds, and they can define for themselves to what degree its beneficial for them to spend their time trying to “break what they’re told” over getting their work done efficiently and focusing on something else, like art, sports, or baking.
Then you’re getting work done under the terms of what you’re told, which again, puts you under the control of those who tell you what to do. Why can’t you question what you’re doing, while you’re doing it? Are there really people who can’t think while they’re working?
Is there a /r/im14andthisisdeep on lemmy?
No, but this sub is pretty much filled with questions just like it. And you haven’t said a thing to any of them. Which makes me think this particular post has hit a nerve?
While I agree with you, I will point out that it’s exhausting to apply that attitude constantly. Many just don’t have the energy.
i think it boils down to: people are stupid, lazy, or ignorant
im not taking a stance. but that would be my shot at the root cause.
those may sound like negative dehumanizing words. but those are very natural,human, vices.
