I was looking over the Developers forum as I normally do and upon checking out the Developers How-To part I noticed This Post and the answers that followed.
This is rather upsetting. Especially coming from a community of people who constantly bitch and complain that there are not enough original games on BYOND or that there are not enough dedicated developers to bring up the quality of BYOND so that more developers will want to join and potentially help bring in business in order to help Tom when it comes to paying the bills, to push out faster and better updates.
Now don't get me wrong I do think that a fair bit of learning to program is doing your own research and asking questions. But not everyone is good at learning like that. They need hands on help or someone to show them how and what to do. And to be told that no one will help you without paying them and chances are if you were offering to pay them they wouldn't help anyway, really just stunts BYOND's growth potential.
I mean honestly, this isn't even the first time I have noticed post like this. quite often do I see developers telling people that no one will help them unless they pay and then often enough I see people offer to pay and still get no help. Everyone wants to complain about the issues but no one actually steps forward and tries to solve them? And I know someone is going to comment saying "Oh well that's what the Developers How-To, Code Problems, and Classified ads are for", but how often do we see people asking for help and getting rude of unhelpful comments while using those forums? You know for a lot of experienced developers who have worked with DM for years and had previous knowledge when coming to DM they are at an advantage. But others who have no previous knowledge and are actually trying to become something here, are shooed away and then people wonder why there are so many rips? It is easier to make a rip then get good quality help for cheap or at all really.
I understand wanting to be paid for your time and effort, but at some point there has to be some give and take with the more experienced developers and the new ones who are willing to put in the time and energy to learn and do so correctly, but need a little extra help them being linked to the reference, or being told to submit problems on the forums.
I think perhaps some of the more experienced developers should get together and form some sort of class where they can teach those willing to learn. Hell it could even be something where a few players pay on a weekly basis to be taught. Or it could be a member feature in the future where those willing to teach and those willing to learn and/or pay to learn can get together and work with each other to make better more stable developers for the future of BYOND. The same concept could be applied to pixel art as well. This way experienced Developers would make some money on the side for teaching, and inexperienced developers could become better.
On one hand, if no one likes this feature and takes advantage of it then it doesn't hurt anyone. On the other hand if there are a decent amount of people who would like to use this service, those teaching can stand to make a decent amount of money and may just have a issue fitting in teaching so many people into there daily schedule. Which of course could be worked around and if enough developers are interested in might not be a problem. Of course making classes that need to be paid for would drastically limit the amount of people who actually join to those who are serious enough to pay to learn.
I decided to put this on the BYOND discussion section because I did want to get the opinion of others as well as Tom directly. I would like if those who respond to this keep a positive attitude when responding and stay on topic.
ID:132387
 Feb 8 2011, 2:57 pm
|
|
This isn't the first time a class or teaching service has been suggested. The problem is finding people who are both motivated and skilled. Developers who come to BYOND might be more anxious to make games than teach. Even if money is offered, there's more of a paying audience for the former.
If you really want this done, stop looking for permission. Don't wait for others to implement your idea. Just get the skills and start teaching. =) | |
I directed this personally at Tom but left it open to all to discus because I wanted Tom himself to see the suggestion as a person in a place of power on BYOND and give thoughtful input about what could possibly be done about this suggestion but also so he would see others opinions on the subject. Generally when I have directed topics at Tom he answered (especially when his name is in the title XD).
| |
I agree with your post, Moussiffer. This is my opinion, if people are gonna complain about the lack of original games/ development, do something about it by helping newbies that actually want to learn since the reference can be kinda hard to understand/ vague. Also, with all these expert coders around, it's a wonder why a crazy good byond game hasn't been made yet.
| |
I do think the educational materials are lacking but this isn't the solution. Most of the existing educational resources (tutorials, demos, articles, etc.) are one-shot creations. Someone felt like helping newbies so they wrote a tutorial, often in a single sitting, and posted it for others to learn from. It's quite a stretch to go from making one-shot tutorials to having a class that meets regularly.
Also, I'm not sure why cost is an issue. It's difficult to find a pixel artist who will make a couple of icons for free, why would a personal DM tutor be free? When you put things in perspective it's surprising how many user-created educational resources already exist and are freely available. | |
It's most probable the course of action or decision will be made by ourselves collectively though, as Tom has plenty of other things to be getting on with. No doubt he'll bring his experience to bear, but there are 10000 of us, and one of him.
| |
The problem with your theory is: The experienced developers don't owe anything to the community and it's completely up to them whether or not they want to help people. They have no obligation to help struggling newbies (nor do they have a right to complain about the quality of games, seeing as they're quite capable of making them themselves).
You're making demands of people who spent years of their life learning this stuff, and I find that to be quite unfair. For instance, there is far more teaching material on this website now than when I started messing with DM in 2003. | |
This is rather upsetting. Especially coming from a community of people who constantly bitch and complain that there are not enough original games on BYOND or that there are not enough dedicated developers to bring up the quality of BYOND so that more developers will want to join and potentially help bring in business in order to help Tom when it comes to paying the bills, to push out faster and better updates. I do not understand where you are going with this. What's the problem with what I said to the person asking for help? He was asking if anyone could tutor him, which usually means to sit down for hours on end and explain everything step by step. If someone has time to do that for free just to help out, then great. ... And to be told that no one will help you without paying them and chances are if you were offering to pay them they wouldn't help anyway, really just stunts BYOND's growth potential. You have completely misinterpreted the message I was giving to that person. I was not saying nobody was going to help him, I was telling him he's unlikely to get a dedicated tutor to sit down and give him complete lectures. Because that is what a tutor does. I admit I could have worded it a lot better, but really it's the truth. However for "casual" programming help one could just log onto Chatters or something and ask for help, or simply ask here on the developer forums? I didn't mean to crush anyone's hopes by saying they weren't going to find a tutor, I was encouraging the original person to get their feet wet with the language then come back to the forums and ask some questions and get started making a game, possibly collecting constructive criticism from people here. I also don't understand why the moderator(s) edited the last bit of my post out, but that's something else. | |
Gtgoku55 wrote:
... Also, with all these expert coders around, it's a wonder why a crazy good byond game hasn't been made yet. See: Decadence. | |
Tiberath wrote:
The problem with your theory is: The experienced developers don't owe anything to the community and it's completely up to them whether or not they want to help people. They have no obligation to help struggling newbies (nor do they have a right to complain about the quality of games, seeing as they're quite capable of making them themselves). I don't make demands of anyone. I ask, however that those with experience work together with those who don't have experience to work towards a better BYOND. You are right they don't owe anything to newbies and aren't required to help, but my point is that even though they don't have to, why shouldn't they? The worst that can happen, we have more good games. And some experienced developers have a little less time to to deal with because of helping out. You're making demands of people who spent years of their life learning this stuff, and I find that to be quite unfair. For instance, there is far more teaching material on this website now than when I started messing with DM in 2003. If you had trouble finding good resources when you first started then you might understand to some extent how others feel now. Sure there may be a lot more resources to work with, but not all of them are really conducive to learning. and looking through 30 different demos or tutorials or libraries that all teach something similar but in completely different ways and not having a decent hold on the basic of the DM language can be very confusing and even discouraging. | |
Duelmaster409 wrote:
Gtgoku55 wrote: showing 1 game out of the hundreds on BYOND doesn't really prove anything. There are not really that many top quality games on BYOND for experienced developers to look down their noses at newbies and refuse to help them. And that being said. We could all benefit from more quality games if there was more help spread around. | |
I've been pushing for Tom to make some site changes (and some changes to the Dream Maker program itself) to help promote activity in the developer community. Part of the problem is that experienced developers aren't as active as we'd like them to be, but the other part of the problem is that developers don't work together. Having an active developer community (more than just a forum) would give people a venue to collaborate on tutorials. If we could get a few experienced developers to spend an hour a week improving a single introductory tutorial, in a few weeks we'd have a tutorial that's better than all of the current ones.
| |
Forum_account wrote:
Also, I'm not sure why cost is an issue. It's difficult to find a pixel artist who will make a couple of icons for free, why would a personal DM tutor be free? When you put things in perspective it's surprising how many user-created educational resources already exist and are freely available. I am not saying that people shouldn't ask for payment. Because honestly I think people should be paid for there hard work. The point is the middle ground that experienced developers should try to make with inexperienced developers in order to get decent paying jobs or even just improve BYOND in general. | |
Forum_account wrote:
I've been pushing for Tom to make some site changes (and some changes to the Dream Maker program itself) to help promote activity in the developer community. Part of the problem is that experienced developers aren't as active as we'd like them to be, but the other part of the problem is that developers don't work together. Having an active developer community (more than just a forum) would give people a venue to collaborate on tutorials. If we could get a few experienced developers to spend an hour a week improving a single introductory tutorial, in a few weeks we'd have a tutorial that's better than all of the current ones. I really like this idea. It could definitely improve BYOND. | |
This has nothing to do with BYOND. Welcome to reality.
No one should expect a handout, or to have someone provide them with a service "just 'cause". Volunteering for charity work to help an anonymous person online shouldn't be at the top of anyone's priority list. | |
This has everything to do with BYOND. If that is part of your reality then people like you should be a part of this community. This is a community for a reason. We should strive as a community to be better. We should work together in order to raise the quality of BYOND for the better.
| |
Moussiffer wrote:
This has everything to do with BYOND. I don't know how to respond to that since your reply had nothing to do with my comment. This must be a pattern for you :P | |
Your last comment stated "This has nothing to do with BYOND. Welcome to reality"... to which I replied that it did... If you are that forgetful of the comments you make, then maybe you should buy little sticky notes and make notes for yourself. Microsoft has a really interesting Notepad widget you might be interested in if this is a problem for you.
| |
What you describe is something we could collectively run ourselves, or some similar scheme could be run ourselves if need be.
The issue I've classically found with these things is producing teaching material that properly lends itself to a variety of learning styles, and gets that all important balance of theory and tangible progress. Although people like to talk big and say "pay me for tutoring", tutoring is actually kind of tricky. Some determination on the tutor's end to improve here can overcome this though, I reckon.
Of course study buddies and personal mentoring can also help a lot too, but stand to be resource intensive (giving very quality gains though).
As for the comments themselves, I struggle with them as a moderator, as (like your example) they often come with useful content. Do I redact the unproductive comments themselves? If so, how far do I take that with other posts? As we're always up on the public execution block as it is for "not being fair" or "being biased", it's territory that I bet most wouldn't touch.
What I may do is take to making moderator presence more high visibility, just noting to the poster that these little extras are actually quite demoralising and not really helpful. I'm sure the poster meant no ill to the OP, but these things do sometimes need noting, I can agree. I've made more private notes on this kind of thing previously.