Pet Peeve – My Language Doesn’t Need That Feature!

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I apologize ahead of time for this soap box, but I have just read the nth forum posting with a response like this. I have been a fairly flexible software engineer for the majority of my career and this means that I use many different programming languages. What language do you need? If I do not know it already I can get up to speed fairly rapidly. After all good engineering is good engineering; the rest is just semantics.

That said… when switching to a new language you occasionally need to know how to do something. For instance you are trying to find out how to create a switch statement or create enumerations or some other feature that you are used to in your native language. So inevitably you ask the masses via some programming forum. This is response I absolutely hate!

XYZ feature isn’t in my language because it’s not needed. An array will handle anything in the world that you ever wanted to do. Yada-yada-yada (translation – I’m superior).

Why would you even post something like that? It is NOT helpful to anyone but your own ego. If the requested feature is not in the language why not simply state that fact. Then if you wanted to actually go the extra mile you might suggest an alternative method for accomplishing the same thing. If you really wanted to be nice you could even include a snippet of code to demonstrate the solution. I have no comprehension of why anyone would want to belittle another human who is asking an honest question and seeking help. There is nothing noobish or wrong with that. They are simply looking to improve themselves, which we should all try to encourage.

Can’t we all just get along?