Every time I've gone to RubyOnRails I've had to fend off supposed experts who are really morons. Like since 2005. I've had the experts tell me, when asking questions about how I might fix an issue with upgrade issues with a big rails plugin (now engine) and rails that "You should just wait and the plugin maintainers will do it eventually". No help on what to try, nothing. It took me throwing down the commit log / website showing me as the maintainer to get them to not be condescending. That channel is terrible. The shining light is Radar. Man that dude is good. Tester and coder on shopify. And effing friendly. Can't say enough about him.
Never, ever go in #rubyonrails. Every time I've ever been in there I get nothing but industrial strength sarcasm from people who don't actually know what they're talking about.
Who are these people? Are they socially awkward nerdy types, or are they more the "jock" side of the coin who understand social rules better than most but simply consider themselves above them?
My first instinct is to assume they're all 14 years old, because that was what everyone I knew was like when I was 14. Inevitably these people turn out to be in their 30s and have somehow assembled complete lives with jobs and houses and so on. The mind boggles.
By the way, #ruby on freenode is very noob friendly, with people going far out of their way to help beginning coders. There's probably a better class of noob in there as compared to #rubyonrails though.
I agree with everything except for the "shining light is Radar" bit.
In my experience, he certainly started off as helpful for me. But perhaps I didn't learn at the pace that he expects, he quickly turned into a power-flexing troll - belittling any question I had.
Left a very bad taste in my mouth, and almost exemplifies everything that is wrong with the community.
That's sad, because as I said...he started off very helpful.
Do I ask a ton of questions? Yes. But if you can't manage that, you shouldn't be the head of a channel designed to help people. It's that simple.
