I'm totally opposite. Make beginners feel welcomed and allow beginner questions.

Too often as a beginner you find a new subject you enjoy and so you go online to find communities with similar interests just to be hit in the face by a community that resents you, harshly criticises you and doesn't take into account that you may be a beginner and it totally de-motivates your interest in the subject. I don't want /v/programming to have a hand in making beginners abandoning the subject, there isn't enough people who can program in the world as it is. Sure make an FAQ for the routinely obvious and nooby questions, but some beginner questions I believe are valid.

I can get behind this. In the end it's up to the users to decide what kind of content they find interesting by upvoating.

I don't see a benefit in discussions on advanced programming topics here. Pretty much everyone goes to stack overflow or the multitude of sub-sites with highly active communities and a lot of knowledge already there.

The question I'd ask is: "what can we do to make this sub unique, and not just a clone of something else that doesn't provide much value?". It's a tough one.

I agree. To speak to this issue, I believe too many rules killed a lot of good subreddits in general. Subverses should almost be treated as hashtags rather than subforums. People try to break down subforums too much and end up with dead subforums. There should only be two rules: keep it on topic and don't be a dick(optional depending on the subverse).

I'm a devops guy so my programming skills aren't beginner level but it's not advanced either. The programming sub at that other place, I felt wasn't very welcoming to people like me who wanted to ask intermediate level questions, and learnprogramming usually doesn't give me very good answers due to being targeted towards beginners. I also got a lot of vibe from the comments in there that a lot of people are elitists and very close minded towards doing things in different / new ways and looking at new programming languages and frameworks.

I wasn't even aware that that was a rule on that other site. I can see how detrimental that would be for discussion. Let's not have that same error happen here.

Honestly, it'd be better to have a network of development subverses. I don't want to talk about specific web development techniques in a general computing forum; there should be /v/webdev or something.

One of the main issues we're going to run into as a subverse is that people will come here to ask questions that can be answered with a simple Google search. I'd say I'm fine with simplifying things and welcoming beginners to the subverse but we need to establish that we're not here to answer simple questions or do somebody's homework for them. Encourage beginners to follow lesson plans and ask intelligent questions about how things are designed. Maybe we even have a section in the sidebar that contains resources with defined guidelines for programming languages and where you can learn them.

I've avoided /r/programming for years because it can often be needlessly hostile, especially when presented with the controversial or unconventional. "Why would anyone want to do this?" or "You know you can do XYZ instead, right?" They'll pick at the slightest inaccuracy in a post and dismiss the whole thing. Instead I've stuck to smaller communities of the same topic, like /r/coding or the language-specific subreddits, and now /v/programming.

Personally I'd prefer a ban on obvious homework questions. Some subreddits get drowned in that noise (example: /r/matlab) and I end up unsubscribing to avoid it. But maybe that's not the right choice for a catch-all name like /v/programming.

I agree, this subverse should be as open as possible. Maybe filter/assign tags to help sort between beginner/advanced/discussion?

Can we have the MODS sticky this? It seems a very useful idea to perpetuate.

Contribute more. Also we should have event like coding project which start simple then get more complex. Then every two months. We restart the whole thing with a new project

I feel like maybe we'd need to split text posts off into the equivalent of /r/programmerchat eventually, but for now I definitely agree with you, especially since we get far less traffic here.

I do agree but this may also lead to the same problems that Stackoverflow has, where moderators have to constantly be on the lookout for "HELP MEH! PM ME UR SOURCE CODES!" type posts.

I also don't have so much of a problem in keeping the old format, but it would be nice to have something that helps this subverse stand out more compared to the old subreddit.

Can we define "beginner questions"?

Are you saying questions like "what's an int?"

How would you rank this question: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4627330/difference-between-fprintf-printf-and-sprintf

Further, is it acceptable to ask for recommended reading? Wouldn't this group be ideal, due to our experience, for knowing what's practical and what sucks? "No, that book sucks -- it teaches you bad habits."

What separates us from stackoverflow? It seems, at least to me, the main thing is we link to blog articles and such (keeping current, finding new stuff). So should we redirect programming questions to a site dedicated to programming questions and instead use this as a place for staying current?

I'm thinking out loud here.. not pushing for anything.

I think we should also limit personal blog posts.

I remember that fuckwit that posted the "4 problems any competent programmer should be able to solve" from his own blogpost and provided the wrong solution.

Now /r/programming is literally a bunch of arrogant assholes posting their own blogs. See for yourself

RULES RULES MORE RULES -Reddit

Have an upvote OP...oh wait, sorry, I'm all out :\

Wait, I just scrolled through a couple of pages of /v/programming and I'd say it already sucks. Posts titled "need some advice," "colors," "how do I pick the best color" will only drive quality posts away.

This can be improved with subvoat synonym mechanism. Tagging is better, but require more effort and also require synonym, so subverse synonym should at least give some improvement.

The poster can tag the question as v/prog_design, v/prog_help, v/prog_architecture, v/prog_syntax, v/prog_language, v/prog_feature and all of them can be seen from v/programming. Meanwhile user can also filter into synonym.

That way, you can filter for whatever discussion you like without negating the rest invisible to everyone.

I definitely agree on this!!!

I would concur on most points. You want to 'mix' the more experienced people with the noobs and honestly we're all not experts in everything. I might be great at mySQL/MSSQL and absolute crap at Oracle (totally true). Anyway, I think that we could (might?) have a programmer lite space where people can feel that they can get their feet wet with noob questions or even better a noob question day. Beginner Tuesdays where any question, no matter how lowly, can feel more free to be asked. I think the more likely 'sinking' of it is when threads devolve into X is better than Y.

I agree, I think we need to allow for beginner, intermediate, and advanced questions.

Keep both of those types of questions together is a great idea. A combined community would probably lead to a better experience! I BASE THIS OFF OF NOTHING!

I agree. How bout just in general we relax and not have so many rules overall. we want freedom of speech but then impose those little totalitarian pockets everywhere, doesn't feel very free.

I also think we should allow any kind of programming-related discussion here. The community will decide what they do and do not like. If the amount of questions about programming becomes so large that they overwhelm other content, then is the time to decide if we need a separate subverse.

I think unfortunately it was the inevitable effect of a sub growing too big. Once that happens than the topics of post start to widen to the point where it becomes harder to maintain, especially when there will inevitably be multiple posts of the same exact question, which understandably can frustrate the current subscribers. For example, you reach a point where you start getting the same "What is the best programming language out there?" every couple days and it can get slightly annoying.

I'm not saying I disagree with you, in fact, I'm a beginner programmer myself. I just wanted to put my two cents in as to possibly why Reddit structured the subs the way it is.

I think making it open to all would be best. Just the other day I had a general question about repository patterns and I didn't post it here because I was afraid of being off topic, the question I thought was too advanced for /v/learningprogramming, and too much of a general question for StackOverflow.

I'm pretty sure the real reason it sucked is because there were a lot of things posted that weren't even related to programming.

Personally, I think you have to be small in order to have a group as general as "programming". Communities should fragment to keep them sufficiently small and focused.

I think you're going to find a split in community any way you approach it. Personally, I don't want to look at a bunch of newbie questions the majority of the time, and I think the floodgates will open if you let them. I'm just one man, with one opinion.

Yeah i agree! I never went on r/learnprogramming or r/programming for this reason. Maybe there should be some kind of "flair" where the person states his level of competency. Then people viewing this subverse that dont care for beginner stuff can just filter it out.

I like having something like /v/learnprogramming as a resource for the absolute beginner - a place for those often repeated questions of "Where do I start?", "What is the best programming language?", "When should I use a for loop?". As someone else mentioned, /v/programming will be the most visible programming resource, and I don't think we should ostracise people for asking "silly" questions (is there even such a thing?), but anything that steps outside of language fundamentals should be fine here, regardless of how simple or complex the problem is.

Lets keep everything in the mainline and fork it down the road.

I feel that the labels should go away. "Beginner", intermediate, etc..

I also feel that we shouldn't be strict on how questions are asked. As long as they're relevant to programming and they have a good intent, then the post should be considered valid discussion.. I mean, programming is kind of a generalized "programming" area so this really could include anything. And if people do come in here with questions, being nice and pointing them to learnprogramming(without being mean) will also win more members here. Friendly community is a happy community.

The thing I hated about Reddit was that some of these communities are too elitist for their own good. I had to leave /r/linux because people kept posting threads about distro-related topics or asking questions, and members of that community kept lynching the OPs who would do this.

I am a software developer, half of the posts on that sub was unattainable to me.

I'm don't really understand the question and I have never had a job programming but I do know that it spits at mn using sc with ef o wv h db p and so on. The numbers use 38 so if I can help someone new or someone with experience who's to say that other than it programs or not other than a computer. I personally think we need more programmers or more programmers thinking together and that do be so hard or quick to judge who's perfect or not.

I really don't know what I'm saying but is there a way to side swipe a hash tag using procedure because didn't instagram come up on something like this?

Huh, I felt that not allowing text posts made /r/programming much better. Otherwise it would have been cluttered with newbie posts or posts like "what is your favorite editor?"

How about this crazy idea: just let people ask whatever they want and don't be dicks. If you don't like it, don't upvote. If it is a question missing key details or just something stupid like 'givr me Angular tutorial', that they should have googled, say so and downvote it.

Don't be dicks, don't automatically 'segregate' or censor, don't tell them to put it in a sub no one reads.

Part of having a free forum that you can participate in is giving everyone a chance to participate and seeing some stuff you don't like.

I say, report the ads and pure spam, but, don't censor, segregate, or moderate otherwise.

It seems to me that systems like this that are primarily oriented towards communicating should be an unthrottled stream. If somebody comes asking for help, why not help them? Why chastize them for being curious? As a baseline if "/v/programming" becomes a cesspool of inept questions, then I am sure somebody can create a subverse titled "/v/godly-programmers".

I don't mind questions, but this is basically why I left /r/webdev full of beginners that didn't know anything with 10% interesting links. As soon as /v/programming becomes that I'm just going to go somewhere else.

I don't see any reason to break apart a subverse into tiny fragments. "That question was a beginner question and belongs over there. That question was a partial medium rare advanced question and needs to be posted over there." Why not just leave it here and you can skip over what doesn't interest you?