Mental disorder
In this page, I simply speak freely about several issues.
The Usenet mess
I've been reading Usenet ocassionally for a few years, but I only started to follow them and participate a few months ago, when Ergos systems donated me a dial-in PPP account. Then I started reading news like frantic: comp.sys.ibm.pc.demos, rec.games.programmer, comp.graphics.algorithms, comp.lang.asm.x86...
In the beginning it was some fun, but after a few months, I got fed up of reading the same crap every day: the endless flamewars, the same boring stupid questions (which are perfectly answered in the FAQ and in most cases are completely off-topic) again and again and again and again... An example the FAQ for comp.graphics.algorithms explicitly states that discussion about graphics file formats are absolutely off-topic, and directs anyone with a doubt to the appropriate newsgroups. And then you'll find at least a few questions, and several answers, on that subject every day!
There was the occassional gem, though, and thus I kept on reading. And posting. There are a few very knowledgeable people reading and posting in Usenet (Bjarne Stroustrup, for example). Only a few, of course, because most of them could not bear (not to talk about the time one can lose wading through loads of useless flamewars and off-topic posts).
Finally, I got so fed up that I erased my newsreader and message base completely, and stopped frequenting Usenet. Knowing who the people were whose posts were at least worth the time to read them (and often much more), I started using Dejanews to look for posts from these people: Terje Mathisen, Javier Arevalo, Mark Feldman, Jim Neil, Brandon Van Every, Juan Carlos Arevalo, David Matiskella...
And one post from Terje Mathisen brought to my attencion the SELF-DISCIPLINE program: it's a program about improving Usenet. About making it useful. And now I'm back to news, with a different attitude, and as a SELF-DISCIPLINE member.
I would not be able to explain the program better than the SELF-DISCIPLINE home page.
Why the Internet is not always good for starting programmers
Back in the old days (that is, my old days, the days before the Internet), you didn't really have a chance to find too much info. Information and sample source code were scarce for many kids like me. You had to do it all with very very little info, and lots of experimentation. Even tracing through other people's code was sometimes the only way to learn (I learnt how to access the keyboard directly looking at the keyboard input code in the game Xenon II). It was tough, but it was a very good way to learn.
Nowadays, even 10 year old kids have Internet access at home. If a kid wants to become a graphics programmer, for example, he can go and download dozens of documents on the subject, source code to a Quake-like rendering engine, thousands of lines of sample 3D code. All beautiful.
But there's still only one way to learn: practice. Experimentation. Following your own insane ideas. That's what make you really know everything thoroughly. Even looking up an algorithm and then implementing it yourself is a lot less enlightning than crashing again impassable barries in 10 attempts, and then looking at that very same code to discover The Way to do it.
That's it. The wealth of information on the Internet, may encourage a too pasive attitude towards learning. And learning well is a very active process. Let's not forget it.