I think there’s a few different things worth addressing here, so please bear with me since this might be a long reply.

What you experienced here is, unfortunately, very common for anyone getting into tech. A lot of us can recall the first time reaching out somewhere for help and receiving a mixture of belittlement and vague answers as a response. I’d argue it’s probably one of the biggest issues we have in this space.

If I had to guess why tech forums are so vitriolic to newcomers, I’d say a lot of us simply forgot what it was like to be inexperienced. They forgot how daunting it is to want to learn, to run headfirst into a bunch of errors you barely understand, and then try navigating a sea of concepts and terminology that practically requires a dictionary of its own.

While the forums rarely get better (unfortunately), never let those people drive you away. It’s incredibly overwhelming at first, and there’s a lot of us who are long overdue for a slice of humble pie, but someday things will start to click and the things you want to do will start to come to life.

It’s late, I’m rambling, but you’ll your footing. When you do I hope you get the satisfaction of telling one of those assholes on the forums to shove it while giving another newcomer the welcome they need

Gamer culture I am assuming?

Btw they weren't ignoring you, they just didn't know the answer themselves and wanted to hide it.

Producers too, like music producers I mean. Though I can only speak to that field personally, it might be a similar situation, so I'll share.

Well actually, I mean I guess it's two things- one is that a male-dominated field with a lot of egos involved can pretty easily develop in a snooty direction. STEM careers are famous for that as well. It blows.

The second thing, the thing I was initially going to mention is that at least in the case of producing, there is an epic shitton of information you need to learn to do it well/properly, for starters. Even to just make your first piece, you need to actually STUDY it. That attracts two different archetypes, and the one that sucks is the overwhelming majority. :(

So, as you can probably imagine it's super easy to find courses/tutorials online to learn stuff; you can find the whole field plus music theory on YouTube for free. The problem is that a lot of beginners don't bother to do that, and/or don't think they'll need to. Unfortunately, it's these lazy fucking casuals that saturate all our "ask someone who knows" spaces with asinine, uniformed nonsense questions.

So you see, by the time you see a question from a legitimate learner, sometimes even a peer, you're so annoyed by the other sort that you can't sort them.

That's not fair to the legitimate learners, of course (and as someone who is not yet a full-on expert, I've been on the wrong end of this myself), but thats the sad state of things.

"Growing a thicker skin", or so I'm told, is the only solution. :(

It’s funny, right? These dudes will simultaneously decry new programmers relying on AI to teach them but then will also turn around and mock and troll new users like duh… I’d talk to the ai too!

I'm sorry this happened to you. Just know that there are assholes everywhere, and they often tend to be the most vocal, especially when they can hide behind anonymity. Try not to let them discourage you.

Which forum lol?

RTFM

~(but seriously, best attempt is to post wrong code and claim it's the best solution for a problem - you will be instantly corrected)~

Nothing makes some sad sacks feel better about themselves than making fun of someone for not knowing what they have learned. Just know they have been pants on their heads stupid about something and had to ask for help. Count on it.

I'm very sorry this happened to you. Please don't let some assholes discourage you. It's a great profession, and can be a lot of fun.

Most of them are retarded. (the programmers)

Whilst dealing with this kind of asshole in a work environment is a lot more complex, online they’re like dogs barking behind a wall - only doing it because they're aggressive simpletons and isolated from any problems from doing it - and just as unworthy of consideration or attention as one.

They really only have any impact on you when you give them more importance than they deserve.

Also keep in mind that these people are at the lower end of expertise and professionalism: top experts don't waste time with talking shit like that, they'll just either teach you or (most likely) ignore you because they think that stuff is too basic and not worth their time, and professionals are used to being professional and shit-talking ain't being professional - even in expertise terms these people are unimportant.

IRC is still pretty popular with programmers and in my experience people are helpful on the various tech channels (on libera.chat at least)

The ones who are rude are arrogant assholes. They are bad people doing bad things. I've been a prismarine for over 40 ears and I'm happy to answer questions even if I've answered them a dozen times before and even if a quick Google search would give them the answer.

…what is is to be a woman in STEM. and why a lot of women leave and why it’s a sausage party. And also why women online often disguise themselves even in games.

That being said I suggest this when some rando online is trying to pressure you: when a person is so fragile to be easily annoyed by your existence: exist harder. They are the fool for giving you such power. Lean into it. Ask more questions. Watch them stir in their seat overreacting.

Cuz one thing I’ve learned is when you are that brave: there are twice as many newbies hiding around you thinking you’re awesome for asking all the hard questions.

Don’t delete because of some elitist assholes. Leave it up for the other newbies. Get more newbies up in their business.

This is why I do actually use AI - teach and troubleshoot. Infinite patience is something technicians do not possess. Rather the opposite. Claude will happily spend hours explaining things or asking me background questions, or letting me ask questions I would be afraid to ask otherwise. I hated having to spend an hour or two simply researching for the QUESTION I wanted to ask so that people wouldn't accuse me of being an idiot, because I used the wrong terminology or something. I still encounter this from other sysadmins at work, so I often ask Claude if my question makes sense or if there's chance for confusion. As a result I actually learn a lot more, a LOT faster, and get the rough touch so much less.

My only question is - would the issue be solved if you followed the manual properly?

I have trained 6 people to fill my shoes in my role. 1 gave up. 1 got fired. 1 was never really a programmer and that resulted in an argument with management about the role actually needed (they call it tier 2 support but you need to be a competent programmer to debug the issues). 2 of the others took other jobs for much more pay. The last guy is still here and he's good I guess...

But I'm tired man... Tired of explaining the same things over again. It's not the new guy's fault but that doesn't change the fact that I've grown jaded. I tend to realize I being a jerk, apologize and tone it down. Doesn't change the fact that my gut response is jerkish.

please do not delete your question. it could easily help someone else who has the same issue. by deleting it, you are throwing away the work of the person who took the time to answer it.

I'm an it professional and I am sad what happened to you.

However, without knowing details I could not pass judgement on what went wrong. Yes, people (not only in it!) are elitist assholes oftentimes but maybe something very basic was off (which you might not have even known, missing experience) and so on and so forth.

Being in the field for decades I can say that there's nothing I have not seen.

Do not lose hope and carry on if you're interested.

Being in the industry, I don't think they are. Forums attract chronically online and miserable people who are not there for beginners but for their own motives.

Because there is a huge demographic of nerds that are actually chuds and learned absolutely nothing from being bullied and/or being a beginner when they were younger.

I bet you can picture the demographic that they overlap with, but I'ma try not to explicitly make this political.

There are shit people everywhere. Focus on the good people and positive spaces.

The short answer is the people you interacted with are assholes. The stereotype of IT people is that they don’t know how to play with others. Just because it is a Stereotype doesn’t mean it is not earned.

Unfortunately there's a lot of pretentious and impatient assholes in this field.

That being said, IRL, I've had coworkers that are assholes, and I've had coworkers that have been the most amazing people. Just depends on who's on your team and who you have to interact with.

I run into people like that at work and what I've discovered is they have no idea they're being rude. Some people in technology are genuinely that out of touch.

Some people are just dick. There might be a bigger crossover between programmers and socially inadequate people, but thankfully it's not a complete overlap (I hope).

Hopefully you'll find saner people somewhere else. It's fine being snarky with people you know and know can handle it, but doing so with stranger online really looks bad moist of the time.

Why do you think they went into a profession where they communicate primarily with a machine?

Yeah, it's common, especially in programming. It's true that searching on Google usually solves the problem, but the biggest issue is that it's hard to know the exact word you need to use. They know the word so it's trivial for them, but that's not the case with others, and they're proud that they're out of touch with people.