Coders - sorry, but especially men - please try to be more conscious of how you're phrasing things when in conversations about how easy or difficult concepts are, to people who either don't code or are brand new.
Phrases like, "I don't see why that's difficult to understand," or "that's just obvious," immediately (and often completely) knock down the courage of the person asking for help (or even someone just listening to your conversation).
@hollie years ago, @brainwane did an amazing conference poster about exactly this. i'm not finding my bookmark of it. do you still have it somewhere, sumana? i remember it being such a fantastic summary of this issue!
@erikao @brainwane Oh I’d love to read it!
@hollie @erikao Glad to be called upon! You may be thinking about one of the following:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Be_A_Better_Mentor_-_What_Hacker_School_Taught_Me_About_Community_Mentoring.pdf (I think this is the only conference poster I've presented) which does mention some rules for behavior
https://www.harihareswara.net/posts/2016/inessential-weirdnesses-in-open-source-software-oscon-2016/ and the section on contempt
https://www.recurse.com/manual#sub-sec-social-rules which I discussed in the poster and in https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Hospitality,_Jerks,_and_What_I_Learned#The_No_Asshole_Zone
@hollie @erikao "Feigning surprise" (that someone doesn't know/understand something) is against the Recurse Center social rules, and I've definitely mentioned that in most of those presentations.
I looked through https://www.harihareswara.net/texts/talks/ and haven't found any other items that would be likely to include the dismissive judgmental phrasings @hollie mentioned
@brainwane @erikao Great poster! And I really appreciate the naming and acknowledging of feigning surprise - that's unfortunately very common in so many learning spaces I've been in (ham radio, sailing, even music and art). It can be so discouraging to people. We need more awareness of that.
@brainwane YES. that poster is what i was thinking of. thank you for re-sharing it. bookmarking now!! oh, love the reminder on these other pieces too. the "inessential weirdness" talk was really helpful for me as well.
@hollie this is (one of) the basis of my quick-version: "'Just' is a 4-letter word".
If you find yourself saying "just", you either don't ACTUALLY understand the problem, or you're dismissing the person who is having the problem. If it's simple? teach it. kindly. If you don't understand the problem? ask questions. kindly.
@hollie IME learning web development as a second career, it wasn't even as explicit as statements like that.
I had a younger colleague whose face would screw up in an expression of disdain (it seemed to me) if I betrayed ignorance on some aspect of the build pipeline, or tooling ecosystem.
In the end I told him flat out that by pulling that face he was making me feel like an idiot and hampering my ability to learn and contribute.
@spitchell That's great you said something, it can be really tough to bring it up!
@hollie coder elitism is a scary thing.
@hollie
As someone as who has been coding for 43 years now (I've just worked that out and its scary:-)) I can give a very good reason why dev's need to learn how to communicate well with peers.
Every three years tech/dev changes so much they effectively become a 'newbie' again, regardless of past experience.
If they have been dismissive and unhelpful towards others, how much help will they get?
What goes around, comes around.
That's why I've seen dev's only last one or two cycles of change.
@hollie I have made this mistake many times. I probably should be saying "I may not understand this thoroughly enough to teach it." Sometimes it's just that I have forgotten what I learned in elementary school and what I learned in college or on the job. I try to catch myself if I start to say it.
@hollie well said. There is nothing “obvious” about anything. It comes down to experience and context. But most importantly, a willingness to learn new things and pass that along. Those who dismiss someone with an “it’s obvious” should remember that they came to this World knowing absolutely nothing. And that, is certainly obvious. Don’t stop learning and surround yourself with people willing to share and learn.
@hollie One difficulty is that, it can range from hard to impossible, to guage the degree to which the audience understands the topic. Without knowing the audience, you can bore or turn off listeners with overly simple info, while also confusing less knowledgable ones. In one-on-one we need to give and receive feedback to zero in the most appropriate level of discourse. A skill that must be learned and practiced.
@hollie In the field of news reporting, I hate to hear a reporter say that something is obvious. I always want to know what they think is obvious, because my personal, political, or geographic circumstances may be sufficiently different that I am not sure what they really mean.
@d_j_henderson That’s such an interesting point! Comparing what we think is obvious would actually be such neat exercise, both in illustrating the point that we shouldn’t assume, but also the range of “obvious” info has to be pretty fascinating by itself.
@hollie I've made breakthroughs in understanding something I've already accepted as"understood" because someone took the time to explain a concept in a novel way and by taking"I'd have thought you'd know this already" away so many times.
It's so important to treat everyone with grace when they ask a question! Thank you for the reminder.
@hollie And also don't mansplain -right?
@hollie I'm a man but not a coder. How come I still feel called out?
I get your point, and support it. But sometimes there is no need to paint with the broad brush – sticking to the problematic behavior is often better than reinforcing the old "us vs. them".
@hollie This advice applies to things outside of coding, too.