Please help me understand

I tinker a lot and dabble with electronics, I know very little about coding. When I come to this forum and ask (what I perceive to be simple questions) I get stone walled or filibustered.

I learn by the hands on approach, when it comes to coding, I take what I know and tweak the code to see if it acts the way I expect it, if it does then it solidifies my hunch and if it doesn't I try to understand what was wrong with my hypothesis. I come on this forum for help and guidance and I get frustrated.

I would like to know when I have questions related to arduino, where can I go to get answers?

How about NOT in a section of the forum that says IN GREAT BIG LETTERS

PLEASE DON'T POST YOUR QUESTIONS IN THIS TUTORIAL SECTION

and

I'M SERIOUS - DON'T PUT YOUR QUESTIONS HERE

?

AWOL,

I appreciate your moderation. This forum is tough to navigate, I'm simply trying to find what sub forum will best answer y question. I really would like to learn but the frustration from the lack of guidance seems to be getting the best of me.

I'm so overwhelmed with everything this site has to offer, i'm trying to navigate it the best I can.

Try looking at the names of the different sections of the forum.
See if you can match the section name to the rough category of the subject of your question.
If all else fails, try "Project guidance"

Just ask your question and ignore any offensive, rude or otherwise needlessly antagonistic replies.

Someone will help you.

Prayers will be answered in the order in which they are received.

sisterlimonpot:
I would like to know when I have questions related to arduino, where can I go to get answers?

I wrote this Thread I'm a newbie, where should I post my question? in an effort to help

If you ask a technical question and don't understand the answer then say so as soon as possible so that YOU don't get frustrated and the HELPER can see that you are trying to take the advice seriously. If you don't comment on a piece of advice people will reasonably assume you have understood it and that assumption can affect the subsequent advice that you get.

...R

If you are learning , there is the playground and tutorials on this site.
There are some good book - Simon Monk “getting started” and of course there are good examples to play with in the “ examples” folder on the IDE.

Do simple stuff first

What was wrong with the advice you got in this thread?
https://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=597765.msg4060325#msg4060325
You asked a question and got an answer. You did not get the run arround. You might not have liked the answer but that is your problem not ours.

If you did not understand the answer you should have asked about the bits you didn’t understand.

You also were asked for further information about the specific problem you were having but you never replied.

If you don’t follow up with information when asked, with the best will in the world we can’t help.

I assume that your problem thread was this one Running stepper motors continuously

As far as I can see, the problem was an extremely common one. While you gave a nice description of the information you were after, you didn't initially mention why and that took things in a direction you didn't expect.

Once it was understood that it was for a fish tank and further, that it wasn't a critical problem if the stepper failed or stopped during a power outage, things got back on track (eventually).

In my experience this is a good place to get arduino advice but it depends on the quality and amount of detail in the question. There was a thread yesterday asking something about bluetooth that got a bunch of sarcastic and derisory responses because there was literally no useful advice that could be given based on lack of information in the question.

Note also, that you didn't get any responses from any of the more acerbic posters. Be prepared for that when you ask your next question.

Finally, remember that you're getting this advice for nothing from volunteers - it may not always be good :wink:

When I have questions about Arduino, I go to Google and almost always get my answer eventually. There are definitely questions where the forum will be more helpful than a search engine. It's difficult to use a search engine effectively when you don't know the correct terminology. If you make a good effort at explaining your question, the humans on the forum may be bit better at interpreting than Google in these circumstances.

pert:
When I have questions about Arduino, I go to Google and almost always get my answer eventually.

That's a bad example. You are streets ahead of most Arduino user, working shoulder deep down in the bits and bytes of what's going on; your answers all over the forum speak to that. You're "up there" in the clouds with the Arduino developers, so if you get conflicting internet answers as is often the case, you already know enough to sift through them and ditch the crap ones.

pert:
There are definitely questions where the forum will be more helpful than a search engine.

Most of us when getting conflicting or even dangerously incorrect answers would not know that any, one or many of the answers were crap. That's why it's not only easier to come straight to a forum, but actually better. If someone gives a crap answer here, someone will say so, and soon the requestor will be able to judge the veracity of what s/he reads and go with "this" one not "that" one. For example someone might be following a dodgy youtube or Instructable in good faith; it's only when they bring it to the forum that someone will say "ooooo no, you don't want to do that, you'll blow your house up" that they realise it's a bad solution.

The problem in forums though, is that too often even the guys and gals who do know their stuff get into a too-deep discussion and the thread degenerates into a "my way's better than yours" pissing contest. Then the op is back where they started: deep discussion on arcana, but no simple working solution.

elvon_blunden:
That's a bad example. You are streets ahead of most Arduino user, working shoulder deep down in the bits and bytes of what's going on; your answers all over the forum speak to that. You're "up there" in the clouds with the Arduino developers, so if you get conflicting internet answers as is often the case, you already know enough to sift through them and ditch the crap ones.

Perhaps, but guess how I got here? I've had no formal education in programming or electronics. I've had no relevant work experience. I've had no mentor to teach me. Everything I know about these topics I taught myself from information I found on the Internet and a lot of trial and error. Six years ago, I didn't even know what a microcontroller was, nor C++. Although I have replied to many forum threads, I have created very few asking questions of my own because I almost always found an answer to them already waiting for me. That said, I have learned a lot from the things other people have posted here and existing Arduino Forum threads are one of the primary sources of information I find in my Google searches.

Evaluating the quality of information is an essential skill for anyone using the Internet for any purpose. It is easier once you have some familiarity with the subject matter, but it's crucial to have the ability to evaluate information even when we don't.

I'm not trying to discourage people from using the Forum. I don't give snarky "let me Google that for you" answers to people asking for help here, and I like that we don't see that much on this forum. However, in this case sisterlimonpot was saying that the forum is not working well for them and asking advice about other places to get answers. It seems appropriate for me to explain what has worked quite well for me.

pert:
That said, I have learned a lot from the things other people have posted here and existing Arduino Forum threads are one of the primary sources of information I find in my Google searches.

As long as you don't encounter those pissing contests which help no-one.

pert:
It seems appropriate for me to explain what has worked quite well for me.

Fair point.

elvon_blunden:
The problem in forums though, is that too often even the guys and gals who do know their stuff get into a too-deep discussion and the thread degenerates into a "my way's better than yours" pissing contest. Then the op is back where they started: deep discussion on arcana, but no simple working solution.

I have come across those and probably participated in some of them.

In my experience they seldom arise where the OP is a frequent participator in his/her own Thread. When there is no response from the OP well ... nature abhors a vacuum :slight_smile:

And there is nothing to stop the OP saying "Hey guys, stop - this is all way over my head"

...R

PS ... I am also self-taught (or is that self-learned). It all came to me quickly over the past 45 years.

If you are like so many others then the answer is rather simple. You do not offer the right information when posting the questions. the quality of the answers is proportional to the quality of the question.

please read XY Problem

if you have painted yourself in the corner, then you arrived in a location after making many wrong choices.
the XY Problem exposes that.

#1) start off by explaining the whole concept and separately, the goal.
#2) often a flow chart of the project and then details of the problem
too often the questions are so focused that the answers are wrong.

Then there is on this forum what I call the Blue LED syndrome.
You ask about a blue LED
people ask why, then talk about batteries and wind up advising to buy a flashlight.

lastly it is communication.
you want a thing but are not sure of how to word your question because the technology is so new.
what you have in your head does not hit the keys
what we see on the screen does not match your need and we take off in a whole different direction.

example
https://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=597765.msg4060325#msg4060325

you asked about taking complied code and extracting.

the libraries are written in C, most anyway
and you can open the libraries with the ide and edit them like any sketch.

but you did not ask that. Your question was specific.

Had you asked. I am having a problem with timerone.h library it is not playing nice with my other libraries.

we might have asked about your skill at coding and if you up to the task of editing the library.
you should be aware of tabs on your IDE and that you can take any library , copy it, put it into a tab, then edit it to your hearts content. it is no longer a library, but part of your sketch.

but you painted yourself in the corner and the answers did not address your actual need because your question did not address your actual need.

for this one https://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=581539.0

the first responses were asking for more information.
then they got into the 'blue LED" syndrome we see on here.

RE-POSTING , if you do open with a question that is not complete and not focused,
you can go back and edit it. PLEASE do not delete or re-write it.
just add a new comment.

PLEASE SEE POST #16 the original question was not detailed so it was re-written on post #16

lastly, if you see the answers going off the rails, stop, say so and maybe re-phrase the bit you need based on the information that developed.

Final note, you asked for short answers, but when you ask 1,000 people, you get what they offer.
Take what you find useful.

I read the XY problem, it was quite informative. Although my tiny brain plugged a scenario to the the problem. Say that X is eating fish, I ask for X and no one gives me X. So I figure If I want to understand the foundation of X, I can research Y and ask, "how do I catch fish for myself so that I can fulfill the primary goal of X?" I start asking foundation questions about X in the form of Y and get a lot of helpful information which fulfills my goal of getting X. The problem isn't asking for X, it's getting the answer for X. So perhaps the question was never X, it was Y all along. But Y can't be X because X was the reason for the inquiry all along. It's just that no one wanted to answer X.

I have since learned that most people on this forum think in binary (black and white, true-untrue, 1-0, full or empty), perhaps that's what makes them good at this sort of thing and naturally gravitates to this discipline. My brain isn't wired like that so when I pose a question, the things that are dissected from my question, I find absurd.

At first I took offense to it, but after months of reflecting on it, I deduced that it was just a clash of the way our brains think. Being aware of that might help me ask the right question, and hopefully the experts on the forum can remember that when they offer to help.

The problem for me is that I don't think I will ever to follow in the footsteps of pert and figure this out on my own (in other disciplines that are more suited for me? Sure! but not arduino coding). I deduced that the knowledge pert has acquired was at the expense of exhaustive searching and reading, and he's not going to give it out unless you proved to him that you have exhausted all avenues for yourself. There's nothing wrong with that way of thinking, I've run into those types of people all my life, "I had to walk uphill in the snow both ways everyday, so why do you think that you shouldn't?" and I would think the opposite, "I had that problem before and don't want you to waste your time getting to the same conclusion, so let me explain to you what I did to solve it."

The conclusion that I have come to is in order to get an answer for X I need to ask the question for X. The problem that I have (to me anyway) X is such a complicated question, that no one is willing to help or I simply don't understand. I didn't realize that the question I was asking was for too complicated for me to get.

Should I take the "baby steps" approach? ask for clarification in a particular code and from that I can possibly learn a lot more and then derive more questions from those answers?

When I post threads I feel inadequate because I know that I don't know the things that you guys know, and find that my question results with the sound of crickets. I don't want to be offensive to those like pert and come out and say, "I just to get from A to B". Coding is extremely difficult for me. Trust me I have google searched, I have read many tutorials and I have watched many hours of video. All it does for me is complicate things more and reinforces that I'm way out of my comfort zone. What frustrates me is that when I come across someone asking for expert advise in the things I know, I tend to go out of my way to help the best I can, and if the questions are ambiguous I try to get pertinent clarification. That's all I want. But I feel that most on this forum don't want me to have a path to B because they feel all I want is the short cut... If I could run the obstacle course from A to B on my own, then I wouldn't come here for help. When I come here for help, i'm already on my knees, don't beat me while I'm down.

There are two themes in Reply #16 that I think are fundamentally incorrect.

knowledge pert has acquired was at the expense of exhaustive searching and reading, and he's not going to give it out[ unless you proved to him that you have exhausted all avenues for yourself.

X is such a complicated question, that no one is willing to help

And if you interpret the responses you receive through that mistaken mindset it will make it very hard to get help because your focus will be on the parts that are difficult (and why did the person make them difficult) rather than on the parts that are easy (oh, wow, I never thought of it like that).

I have a general philosophy for life that "life is how you expect it to be" which implies that the way to change things is to change your expectations. For example if I expect people to be unfriendly then that is the sort of person I will meet (or it will seem like that) and if I expect people to be friendly then I will meet friendly people.

...R

in general, on any forum involving C, you run into individuals who can be described as:

Worfsley Crusher.

tough talking, full of themselves, intolerant, and if you could see through your monitor to their side, more chihuahua than targ.

this is not a hold hands and sing kumbaya board. this is a board where, if you are drowning in quicksand, somebody walking by might bend a sapling down without slowing down. reach up and grab, it's all you get.

the best two bits of advice I got here were, "look into arrays" and "study sprintf". the answers were about that long, and sandwiched by Worfsley Crusher replies.

friendly helpful sociable people don't sit alone in front of a computer screen for hours on end. sitting alone in front of a computer screen for hours on end does not enhance social skills. it's a self sustaining cycle.

Who is "Worfsley Crusher" ?

And it seems to me the implication of your penultimate sentence

friendly helpful sociable people don't sit alone in front of a computer screen for hours on end.

is that anyone who knows enough to give advice is thereby unfriendly.

That's just ridiculous.

...R