<It’s Time to Retire “RTFM”>

Problem 1: It is devoid of empathy.
Problem 2: It assumes negative intent.
Problem 3: It promotes shame.
Problem 4: It discourages learning.
Problem 5: It’s inefficient.

medium.com/compassionate-coding/its-time-to-retire-rtfm-31acdfef654f

archive.li/pNU6f

The culture of programmers and other technologists is plagued by toxic elitism. One of the manifestations of this elitism is an unrelenting hostility toward so-called “non-technical” people (a distinction that’s also ready for retirement), beginners, and ultimately anyone asking for help.
If you’re unconvinced, please spend a few minutes browsing the popular question-and-answer site, Stack Overflow (just make sure you prepare yourself emotionally beforehand).
One example of this hostility is the popular acronym “RTFM.” If you’ve never heard the term RTFM, consider yourself lucky. It stands for “Read the F***ing Manual.”
Lovely, right? It’s often used to respond to questions when the respondent believes the asker could have found the answer “easily” in a technical manual or, more broadly, through other research.
When you use RTFM, you’re saying, “Not only am I not going to help you, but I also want to make sure that you feel ashamed about your inability to help yourself.”

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god forbid someone tells you to fuck off and read a technical reference instead of hassling them about trivial bullshit
i can no longer tell if this is parody or not

Call a WAAAAambulance

>technologists
technicians

Use real words, not buzzwords. Do not make up new words when words already exist.

>discourages learning

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Kill yourself snowflake.

RTFM is the appropriate response to all trivial questions that could have been answered by reading the fucking manual. Same with LMGTFY. We are literally equipping people with a repeatable process for answering their own questions and being more productive.

When people have trivial questions answered for them with no effort on their part and no heckling received for it, guess what the first thing they do is the very next moment they don't know the answer to something off of the top of their head?

Anybody who works in tech already knows this, unless they themselves are the leech. If I don't ask people if they've read the manual, ask them what they've tried already, and give them more places to look instead of just telling them the answer, my entire workweek becomes doing someone else's job for them.

RTFM is the answer to 90% of questions regarding mpv.
It's right fucking there at their website, you can just ctrl+f it.

>Retard wants to use a program without knowing how
This is how your create black boxes

fuck off, dipshit.

But GTFO is still in use, so I'll use that.

It's already badically retired because huge chunk of modern software has no fucking manual at all or it is outdated as fuck.

Read
The
Fine
Manual

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>It is devoid of empathy
Good
>It assumes negative intent
Good. Also learn the meaning of "assume" you fucking ESL
>It promotes shame
Good
>It discourages learning
Only discourages fucking retards, which is good.
>It’s inefficient
Who cares, not my problem.

>If you’re unconvinced, please spend a few minutes browsing the popular question-and-answer site, Stack Overflow (just make sure you prepare yourself emotionally beforehand)
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Seriously though, what the fuck.

>you’re saying, “Not only am I not going to help you, but I also want to make sure that you feel ashamed about your inability to help yourself.”
And that's what I intended to say. Fuck off.

>" I also want to make sure that you feel ashamed about your inability to help yourself.”
Like that's a bad thing; it's not, it's absolutely appropriate.

>"It does not work"
>"What have you tried?"
>NOTHING
This is not just a tech-related problem, it's a general problem. And women are generally much worse in this regard, specially the prettier ones (perhaps they are too used to men helping them out). I really have helped neighbors get their TV working by plugging in the power cord (after being pulled out for vacuuming).

Seriously. If you've tried nothing, investigated nothing and done absolutely nothing to solve the problem on your own then you should be shamed when you bothers others and waste their time.

technologist is an engineering-related role for someone in charge of specification/procurement of parts from manufacturers, original role name pls do not steal

based

From the article: “How do I get all the text on these web pages?”

This is not a question someone would say "RTFM" to, why do they even imply that? Only when people ask really stupid shit like "What is a web scraper" or "How does this web scraper work", THEN you reply with RTFM, which is perfectly fine.

If noobs complain about being helped then its just time to ignore them.
This way the constantly offended will just have to start being offended at themselves and we avoid blame.

TL;DR

as should you have done

kys

Its time to stop policing language.

Attached: nobody likes a nazi.jpg (1024x680, 126K)

RTFM or not, the programming (and in general software) community is undeniably toxic and elitist, and anyone who denies it is deluding themselves.
I totally understand telling people to read the documentation if it really is a trivial problem that only requires a basic understanding of your tools to be solved, but, more often than not, I find it used when
>reading the manual actually doesn't solve the issue, that's why one is asking in the first place
>the issue is actually nontrivial and would greatly benefit from direct help from someone more experienced
But no, you fuckers just need to flaunt your supposed superiority by writing four letters.
It only takes "Yes, I did read it, but it only mentions such and such, it says nothing about this problem" to expose you neckbearded autists as the incompetent, unprofessional and unprepared fucks you actually are.
A personal example that happened to me years ago, asked on the official Debian IRC channel when I was having problems installing:
>when configuring the network, after entering the passphrase and pressing enter, it just goes back to the previous screen without doing anything. i'm using the 32-bit nonfree iso (since it requires the appropriate firmware) on a thinkpad t43p
>"y-you should read on the website! you need to use the nonfree iso!"
>that's exactly what i'm using, as i already said
>"B-BUT WHY ARE YOU USING THE 32 BIT ISO?"
>duh, this is a 32-bit machine
>"th-this is strange, it can't happen, no way..."

As you may guess, nothing was solved. I ended up fixing it myself weeks later after figuring out that wpa_supplicant needed an additional flag, after configuring it manually from the secondary tty. But it was out of pure luck, and RTFM certainly did not help me learn one bit. A simple "sorry, I don't know" would have been much more honest, quicker and less time-consuming.

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yes.

I expect you to try and help yourself before you come to me for help. Chastising you for that might just teach you to be a little more self-reliant.

God I hate this type of person. "It makes me feefees hurt because you're pointing out that I'm a fucking irredeemable retard that thinks sitting in starbucks nitpicking stackoverflow answers counts as productive wooooork"

This. Stop the empathyposting on Jow Forums

If man is too stupid to read the fucking manual he deserves to be told 'RTFM'. There can be no empathy to brainlets.

>You can also ask questions:
>
>“What have you tried so far?”
>“Have you considered X?”
>“What do the docs have to say about Y?”

Isn't this just a pretty printed version of RTFM?
>Have you considered checking the manual entry on the topic of your problem?

>extreme emotional pain of shame

Jesus cuntstabbing christ, how do these idiots manage to survive in the real world where people can not only hurt their feefees, but also punch them in the dick, if they start complaining about "lack of empathy"?

A lot of man pages are terribly written though. Fucking FFMPEG is the absolute worst.

Do these people want every piece of software to be incapable of doing anything complex just so they don't have to read a fucking manual?

>When you use RTFM, you’re saying, “Not only am I not going to help you, but I also want to make sure that you feel ashamed about your inability to help yourself.”

Exactly. Stop asking questions the manual answers on the fist page or the second.

>just make sure you prepare yourself emotionally beforehand
Just end me. How can a person be this pathetic and still capable of surviving without mommy doing everything for them?

>Spoonfeed me, the movement
Never thought the day would come for weird shit like this

>Problem 4: It discourages learning.
The fuck?

>complex
WHERE THE FUCK WERE YOU when Zuckerberg got BTFO because "the terms of service isn't legible"
WHERE THE FUCK WERE YOU
LITERALLY

>WHERE
>THE
>FUCK
>WERE
>YOU

>I ended up fixing it myself weeks later after figuring out that wpa_supplicant needed an additional flag, after configuring it manually from the secondary tty.

Ah, the year of Linux desktop is surely coming any moment now.
To be honest, "it just works" is the best software development paradigm there is.

It's Jow Forums. Of course we are toxic and elitist.

As for IRC channels, they get overwhelmed with idiots showing up every 5 minutes asking incredibly stupid questions. So they get kind of skeptical of people even when they have legit issues. They are just volunteers, they aren't being paid to do people's tech support.

/thread

This is also a troll OP guys, cmon

>sarcasm is trolling

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>Problem 5: It’s inefficient.
>inefficient
you've never actually used `man' have you?
man man
RTFM, faggot.

>Problem 1: It is devoid of empathy.
No it isn't. Maybe "fucking" implies anger, and therefore lack of empathy, but similar phrases like "Google that" basically say "this is something you could easily discover yourself". In an industry where 90% of your job is looking stuff up, NOT having that skill is inexcusable.
>Problem 2: It assumes negative intent.
Again, see 1). It assumes LAZINESS, not negative intent.
>Problem 3: It promotes shame.
And it should! If you're going to be a capable, productive member of my team, I need you to be self-sufficient.
>Problem 4: It discourages learning.
Actually, exactly the opposite. It encourages people to find out stuff for themselves, which any educator knows is FAR more rewarding than the teacher simply saying "here's the answer".
>Problem 5: It’s inefficient.
At first, yes. However, it eventually becomes far MORE efficient, as you learn how bypass the whole stop-off of asking someone else.

From the article:
>Does a teacher answer questions with “Read the F***ing Textbook”? One would hope not.
Well, no, not in those exact terms, since cursing off a student is USUALLY frowned upon, but if I were a chemistry teacher, and my students have periodic tables in their textbooks, and one asks "What's the atomic number of oxygen?", my response would be "look it up". Thats not malice; it's telling the student their wasting my (and more importantly, THEIR) time by diverting to me instead of just looking it up.

>Mentoring and helping is part of your job
Um, no it's not. A lot of techies will mentor and help because they're nice people and like helping others. But saying it's "part of your job" is frankly insulting to the industry and to developers in general.

>Help Vampires
Honestly, this (which the author then says is baaaad) is the best part about the article.

>When you use RTFM, you’re saying, “Not only am I not going to help you, but I also want to make sure that you feel ashamed about your inability to help yourself.”
How is that a bad thing ? Get back to school and learn how to properly do your job

Yep. Not being able to answer your owns questions should make you feel like you aren't helpful to the job in question.

So what faggot? Do something else if you don't like it.
It turns out most people attracted to programming are dicks, fucking deal with it you insufferable dink.
You can always get a job in HR if you can't stand getting your feelings hurt.

What does a TOS have to do with software manuals?

soiboi

documentation is the short straw

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Doing job interview is a fucking joke nowadays. No one can answer simple question like what's an object. At least now I know why there are so many bloated framework and api and bullshit to do simple stuff. People are just incompetent and don't want to think more than two seconds.

>If you’re unconvinced, please spend a few minutes browsing the popular question-and-answer site, Stack Overflow (just make sure you prepare yourself emotionally beforehand).
lolwut. Stack Overflow is full of retards, but it also has a bunch of answers to basic API shit for languages you don't use often.

Of course, everything on medium.com is consistently shit quality, so I don't know why OP would be on it.

How do normies think programmers gained all that knowledge if not by reading shitloads of manuals?

>Do my homework for me!
- No
>That's sexist and elitist!

A bike isn't a fucking vehicle, red stripy thing is a sign. This motherfucker didn't even try. The captchas are very tolerant of actually ambiguous situations (such as a tiny corner of a sign in a block).

White privilege

>nowadays
It's always been a joke. It's why it's so easy to get programming jobs, the "competition" is mostly morons, so being mildly competent makes you look fantastic to interviewers.

The worst man pages are those which tell you to use 'info'.

>RTFM
>it's not actually in the manual

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>A bike isn't a fucking vehicle

Yes it is.

That's why you ride it on the right side of the road instead of on the left.
And why it has mandatory lights.

The captcha only checks for cars, but selecting the bike wheel wouldn't have caused him to fail anyway. He failed because he can't fucking identify signs.

Whatever, this only means my competition becoming dumber and dumber. Yes goyim, don't RTFM, heheheh

No, when it wants you to select cars it says cars otherwise it says vehicles.

Yeah this whole thing is great. It also seriously discourages the toughest competition, people with autism, because they can't tell the difference between an actual workplace and medium.com.

Oh makes sense, but I bet they'd pass that one regardless. It's really fucking easy to pass the captcha, and that guy failed it because he blatantly skipped 2 out of the 3 signs they showed him.

I love a good manual/document. I'd collect tech manuals if I didn't know that would make me look like even more a sperg.

>the programming community is undeniably toxic and elitist
so? why should the inherent state of a community be unwavering help and bend over backwards welcoming?

It clearly was not tolerant of the edges of signs, it said I got it wrong. And a bike is a fucking vehicle.

I'm going to try it again and post whatever happens. I made a script to automatically record them because last night I was getting utterly impossible captchas that took minutes to get through. Now it's giving me relatively easy ones. Bastards.

Attached: captcha.webm (400x581, 271K)

I suggest we replace it with "GFN"

G et
F ucked
N ub

>Problem 4: It discourages learning.
shit nigga I thought you were baiting

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>It clearly was not tolerant of the edges of signs, it said I got it wrong. And a bike is a fucking vehicle.
you skipped two signs motherfucker. The red-and-white-striped sign, and the "Rirchstr." sign written in old English. That is why you failed.

A fucking moron wrote this.

OH! Lets make programming easier, what could go wrong?
>$2B of space equipment last due to programming error.

NAISU

Fucking dumb bitch doesn't seem to get it. Some questions are answered in the manual. But some questions are not. You shouldn't even bother asking questions until you've read it.

>muh elitism
Yeah, say that about engineering a bridge--oh wait. They did and it literally collapsed. Say that about a doctor -- I bet you won't. "LOL HOW DO I UH... REMOVE THE KIDNEY AND PUT IN THIS NEW ONE"

Dumb fucks. Shitters. GOD DAMNIT SJWS RUINED MY FIELD.

Those aren't street signs.

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RTFM came to be because of help vampires. Women happen to often be ones, asking retarded, useless questions. Ain't nobody got time for that shit

To play the devils advocate so much software documentation is either trash or completely worthless. Make a better manual first and I won't have to ask any questions.

What is this "fucking manual"? Where do I get one? I want to have sex sometimes. Is this how all the Chads get good at it?

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I'm learning my first language, i have never asked for help cause i try to learn by myself.
But When i see how you all react, I realize that OP is right.
If I'm good at something and a newbie ask for help i will help him, that's normal and i would don't mind to share some advices.

Classic case of PEBKAC.

man sex

haha gay

>Engineers should be able to help themselves.
>I want this engineer to develop stronger problem-solving skills.
>It’s not my job to help this person.
>The asker isn’t showing enough empathy.

Honestly she's making a pretty good point why RTFM is the correct answer if you really want to help the person asking.

As if empathy has anything to do with getting shit done.

Ask stupid questions, get stupid answers.

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yes

god forbid someone read a book

not gonna lie, I have received the RTFM advice several times in my programming career. most of the time, I feel embarrassed, because 9/10 times I'm asking in the first place is because I don't really understand the "manual", so I seek alternative explanations.

but I've also come to realize something else, and that is that many people who offer this advice do not understand the manual themselves. it is often a way for people to make themselves appear superior without displaying any competency at all. and so this kind of superiority complex spreads like a virus to people like me, and suddenly, I'm doing it to other newbs.

what I'm trying to say is: if you encounter toxic behaviour, you're wasting your time if you continue seeking help from this person because A. they are competent, but will not assist out of a belief that you could figure it out yourself or B. they are incompetent but are feigning competence (likely most of Jow Forums or people posting in this thread)

best advice I could give you is try to find smaller communities or groups to ask for help in. these places are typicially more friendly and familial.

>devoid of empathy
other people have problems of their own to deal with, let alone yours
if you haven't read the manual, you haven't done the most basic step in solving the problem yourself
>It assumes negative intent.
this one's more valid
if you've actually read the manual and gotten a RTFM response, then that's just bullshit
>It promotes shame.
good
you should actually be able to help yourself
the adage about getting a fish vs learning how to fish applies in full force here
>It discourages learning.
explicitly incorrect
>It’s inefficient.
sometimes, this one's true
sometimes, just asking "how do I do ___" would be better than looking it up in the docs (that being said, that leads into "just google it," where typing your question into Google will lead you directly to an answer)
this isn't 2006, you can just copy paste whole error messages and shit and "how do I do whatever" and Google will actually get you the right results most of the time

worst case scenario, just ask and indicate that you've done the prerequisite checks so you aren't wasting other people's time

>selects squares that barely have anything
>example image is of a motor vehicle, selects bikes
>ignores the street name sign
you deserved this

info is genuinely one of the worst things I've experienced regarding documentation
people who don't include decent manpages are just cunts

RTFM = Read the fascinating manual.

aka

RTAD = Read the amazing docs

:)

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>spend 8 hours RTFM despite it being shit
>or ask the guy who wrote it to explain it to me for 30 minutes

>sign that literally tells you the name of the street you're on
>"that's not a street sign"

>I wrote all this shit in the manual for a reason, holy shit user you're such a fucking retard

shut up macfag

read your fucking manual

So thirty people taking 8 hours to read the docs and gain a much more comprehensive understanding is worse than the creator losing 15 hours that could have been spent doing something valuable for him and only encourage these people to return with another question later? And then you get to hundreds of people... really makes sense

>develop autonomy
>or always be spoon fed answers

You aren't entitled to help. Is it nice? Yes. It is always nice and should be valued highly. But you are not entitled to anyone's time. Their time is more valuable to them than it ever will be to you.

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>If you’re unconvinced, please spend a few minutes browsing the popular1 question-and-answer site, Stack Overflow2 (just make sure you prepare yourself emotionally beforehand).
>just make sure you prepare yourself emotionally beforehand
you do what?

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No official sign would be made in a bizarre font like that. I've never seen a street sign in anything but helvetica. It was probably put up by a private owner.

If they wanted motor vehicles they wouldn't just say "vehicles". And if the square contains the edge of a sign, it still contains a sign. It usually works vid related.

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>if you've actually read the manual and gotten a RTFM response, then that's just bullshit
If you read the manual you're able to ask a precise question or tell you don't understood this specific part of the manual.
I wouldn't mind someone (beginner) that ask but show some interest about something. I'll be glad to help him actually.
People asking to do their job or homework should be burnt

That is one lewd shinka

We still need RTFM, but use frigging instead of fucking. thought it's the same "meaning" but it more euphemism.

It's the current year.

you just have to flame the shit out of stuff you can't make work, and autists who like it will go out of their way to prove it's awesome and you're just a dumb cunt

Careful there you might have learned something. Can't have that now can we.

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this is blatant spam
use the report button without fear

I don't have haha on my system.

I do this because often the accepted answers are not the best ones.