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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

…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.

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.

I just created an account to tell you, if you would like, I would be super happy to either answer that question you had, or if I don't know the answer show you how I research problems related to programming or archotecture or algo or whatever needs done to finish a project. I've been in IT for 20 years now. What you experienced is the very thing I've dedicated my career to correcting.

Fuck rude gatekeeping assholes, knowledge is for everyone.

Some of them are probably insecure about their own limitations and find pleasure in mocking someone who knows a little less than they do. On the other hand there may also be, among the crowd, those who genuinely found your mistake to be an unusually funny one.

It's because they're stupid and mask their flaws by being rude so you don't question their authority or intelligence.

Report the rude assholes. Genuinely not knowing something while genuinely asking for knowledge should never be shat on.

Without seeing the entirety of the interaction, it's hard to be sure.

Some people are assholes, and because nobody wants to interact with assholes, they usually end up congregating on whatever forum doesn't ban them. Moderation is hard and ban evasion is often easy, so there end up being a lot of places like that.

The other side is that people in general ask a lot of bad questions, and a forum flooded with bad questions becomes useless because people who could answer good questions either get tired of it and leave, or spend so much time on the bad questions they don't have time for the good ones. People get frustrated when they think that's happening to a forum they enjoy, and programmers are famously better at communicating with machines than with people.

Here's are some tips to ask good questions about programming:

• First, try to find the answer without asking other people. This is especially important when it comes to programming because the whole job is problem-solving. That means figuring out how a search result, LLM output, or published documentation relates to whatever it is you're trying to do.
• Once you're sure you need help from other people, clearly articulate what it is you want to happen, what you tried in order to achieve it, and what actually happened. Use more detail than you think you need here, especially regarding your expectations. Sometimes the mere act of composing a question this way leads you to the answer, which is effective enough there's a popular technique of explaining problems to inanimate objects.
• Include the troubleshooting steps you tried from the first step above in your question. By typing it out, you may discover an error or omission in your process, but you also communicate to other people that you're not just being lazy, wasting their time, and reducing the signal to noise ratio of their forum.

Frankly, this has been quite a significant barrier to my Linux adoption previously. Its really unfortunate that people are like this. I wish there were set tags or communities for noob problems so people could post questions safely. Anyone who doesn't want to engage with noobs can then stay away.

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.

Do I know why that happened to you? No, just guessing.

What I do know though: if it was like some replies here suggest, that it’s all due to IT folks not playing well with others, then forums like stack overflow wouldn’t exist.

What I also know: I’ve been to a lot of forums, not all IT related, and I met quite a few people online who just love to be rude, regardless of the topic.

So if I had to guess why, I’d say because they are assholes, not because it was an IT forum.

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.

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.

Did you practice due diligence of RTFM (reading the fucking manual) & researching the problem earnestly before asking a question that requests people to commit their time to answer it (ie, were you considerate), and did you show the effort you had put into answering the question yourself & what insights you gained before getting stuck? That's usually it. No one appreciates their time wasted by poor effort.

I used to work with a programmer who would schedule meetings with IT subject matter experts of systems we were working on integrating. Instead of doing the research in advance & coming prepared with meaningful questions, he'd waste their time (and mine!) with questions he could have answered by reading public documentation. It was infuriating.

Every industry is like that, but with programming, you’re usually asking online, and people tend to be much bigger assholes online. Try not to let them bother you. Eventually you’ll be better than them, because those people tend to not be that good at what they do anyway.

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.

The Internet has a tendency to amplify these bad behaviors.

It's been said that the fastest way to get an answer to your programming question is to get someone to give you the wrong answer. Everyone jumps to correct that person much faster than they want to just answer a question.

To some degree, you have to expect people to be assholes, and you have to navigate around that. It does really suck though.

If you asked the question properly and they still gave you more grief than help, then it's their fault for sure.

Without knowing the context - that's key both questions, the one you asked then and the one you're asking now - we can't be sure what happened. And I'm not going to jump to conclusions about how much context you started with in your actual question because that is no help to you.

I say point us to the question -- and accept we're going to answer honestly.

A large majority of programmers seem to think sharing knowledge means they will lose value so they are super stingy with it. "Back in my days" you'd find people literally using their shoulders to block anyone's view of their code

99% of those are terrible programmers that do not really understand what they are doing.

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)~

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

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.

I dont know why some people are assholes. You asked a beginner level question on a forum that allows, I'm assuming, beginners to ask questions. I hope this never happens to you again. Some of us enjoy working with sincere, curious beginners.

There are ways to talk to these condescending sarcastic assholes. But fuck them. I sorry they were hurtful and I hope you find people who want to go with you on your journey with you.

In short, this is a social faux pas that you didn't know about, because you're new to asking questions online.

And as you can see from the existence of that wikihow page: it's a common problem and you are not the first or the last to run into this. Sorry.

https://www.wikihow.com/Ask-a-Question-on-the-Internet-and-Get-It-Answered

Learn the culture of the forum. Every community on the internet has its own style and set of rules (both written and unwritten). Spend some time reading through other posts before making your own. This will help you learn the etiquette for that specific forum. Knowing how to ask your question in a way that fits in with that culture can really help you get the answers you need.

Make your title a succinct version of your question.

Go into detail in the body of the message. After writing the title, explain the details in the body. List specific problems and what you have tried so far.

Describing what you have tried so far, is extremely important.

Writing it out can make you go through the thinking steps necessary and you will answer your own question in the process of asking it. That's so common it's called "rubber ducking". Everyone does it. But if you don't do the writing, people can be cross because you're asking a question you didn't need to ask.

Keep an open mind. There's a chance that you won't like the answer you receive. There's also a chance that the answer that you don't like is the only available option. Make sure to keep an open mind about your responses, and try to avoid getting defensive.

Don't give up. If you don't receive any responses, or the responses are not satisfactory, take some time to examine your question. Was it specific enough? Did you ask too many questions? Was the answer easily obtained through a web search? Is the question even answerable? Rework your question and ask it again, either in the same place or a new one. Never believe that you are entitled to an answer. Responders volunteer their time to help out other users. No one owes you an answer, so you should avoid acting like they do.

There are different kinds of communities that have different levels of professionalism and question asking culture. You picked one at random at the wrong level.

I promise you not every community online is like that. Try a different one.

And also, you didn't do your research for this question either. Or you could have found the wikihow page. 😜

Still?? The elitist culture threw me off programming over twenty years ago. I really thought and hoped it had changed