I have now a job as a java programmer, so obviously I won't be programming PHP that much. And I won't visit these forums either.
I have learned very much here. I got good help when needed, and gave even more help to others. And I have noticed that you can sort everyone that wants help into one (or more) of the categories below.
Persons that are much more important than everyone else. They demand answers at once. They can't accept that there are other persons that need help as well, and that it would be fair to help people in the order they asked the questions.
People that don't want to give enough information. They never reads instructions or try to make it easy to answer them, others should just know what they think. When you ask for more information you get (in best case) one word at a time. They then wonder why they haven't gotten an answer.
Persons that don't want to learn, they just want a solution. When you tell them to search for something they wonder if you can get them the information, even if you submitted a URL for them. If you tell them that they have to put a little work into programming they get irritated at you. This category also contains everyone that don't search before asking questions.
Many persons that want help fit into two or three of the categories above, and it makes it boring to try to help out. And to be honest, I don't care about them or their code. They are not worth the effort it takes to help them out. Then why did I answer a lot of questions? Because of the category below.
- People that search and try to solve their problems. When they fail, they ask for help. It means that there are not that many questions from this category of people. When they get a hint or a phrase to search for they do their job and then ask for more help if they haven't found the answer. They doesn't take it personal when you criticize their code and suggest improvements. It is this category that reads forum instructions. And it is this category that don't need to read it, they use their common sence without having to know exact rules. It is this category of people that become good programmers, and this category make it worth all the work.
I hope that you get more people from category 4 in the future. And I hope that this forum will continue to be the best forum to ask PHP questions. With the regular staff it should not be a big problem.
