> Some programmers (like myself) have little patience for people they consider should know better and are wasting their time. These same programmers are far more charitable to newbies because they know newbies are still learning.
Some programmers are life-long learners and know a very different subset of things. It’s important to remember that just because something is obvious to you doesn’t make it right and doesn’t make it obvious to others.
Totally agree. Though, usually these programmers know how to properly ask a question, make a bug report and/or feature request.
They wouldn't, for example, just barge in an oss project with arguably low value statements like "Python 2 is retiring in thirty months. Calibre needs to convert to Python 3."
I am guessing you haven't interacted with the developer of kitty. It is astounding how needlessly rude he is. No matter our expertise, we all have areas of ignorance and it is precisely due to that ignorance that we may not have the language to "properly" frame our question. If we had that knowledge, we wouldn't be asking the question in the first place.
I have never seen a maintainer go so far above and beyond to condescend and insult people asking questions -- not making demands like your example. In my case, I asked a question about something that wasn't working as I expected in the github discussions and he repeatedly insulted my intellect (while simultaneously blaming another program when it was in fact a kitty misconfiguration that was causing my issue). He did eventually leave enough breadcrumbs that I was able to solve my problem but rarely have I had such a negative experience with asking an (IMO) not stupid question.
Some programmers are life-long learners and know a very different subset of things. It’s important to remember that just because something is obvious to you doesn’t make it right and doesn’t make it obvious to others.