Nice to see i'm not the only one to look at these forums with a level of trepidation.......
It's just there seems to be a high volume of arrogant ego's present - what is easy for them doesn't translate to easy to the uninitiated and some of the responses iv'e seen have left me speechless regarding the social skills of certain individuals. Yes, i'm in fear of asking a question, often resorting to googling tutorial videos to watch for hours on end to try and find the relevant point i'm looking for being discussed in simple terms.
While I respect the lack of patience for stupid questions ( I'm an electronic security systems installer, so iv'e seen/heard it all ) and poorly described errors or project issues, the level of knowledge some people are expecting others to have is ludicrous and incompatible with teaching. If I spoke to my lesser co-workers or trainee's as is done here sometimes, or worse still my clients ( stupid question posers #1 ), I'd be sacked. Combine that with what seems to be a complete lack of a forum level search function, there's definite room for improvement here with the forum design and it's heavier users social skills.
To those who are well versed in both component level electronics and C++ programming, I'd suggest you keep in mind you were new to both fields at one stage. No, everyone doesn't have a professional career based in either field, some people are just hobbyists. No, not every user of the forums wants to try and find the previously discussed topic last posted in 4 yrs ago by manually clicking through page after page of forum topics and sub folders.
Take myself for example - Iv'e been installing, servicing and designing security systems for 15 yrs, ALL of my electronics knowledge is self taught, my only experience with code level programming was about 30 years ago with BASIC on a C64. Learning C++ for arduino is a daunting experience, the official tutorials are very limited, the reference section far too complex and the reference code examples are vague.
Sometimes it's a nightmare just to work out which code function / variable / structure component I should try and learn next. Some of the code functions / variables / structures seem completely irrelevant to anything and / or extremely advanced and thus unlikely to ever be used by the average Arduino user. When you then add library's into the mix, it's a complete head melt moment. It ( the reference section ) needs breaking down into basic / intermediate / advanced / masochist so the self taught have a chance to learn. Some 3rd party tutorials do a far better job of explaining the coding and electronics components of arduino than the official site, that is once you've spent hours finding them.
TL;DR - Wow....well what was going to be a brief comment about the forum in relation to the original post, turned into a long winded waffle, but hopefully someone takes the time to read it and understand a different perspective. I look forward to seeing your "arduino learning process" post Evanp886 and I will gladly post my own experiences in the hope of it benefiting other beginner users.