To be fair, new programmers generally don’t know enough to construct a proper Google query either. And yes there are some lazy people who just don’t try. But sometimes you know what you want to achieve but any query you try seems to be unhelpful. For example, if I want to learn how to store settings in c++ the first link for me tells me to use boost. Now I need to learn about linking libraries and 300 other boost-isms. While anyone with any basic knowledge could recommend reading strings line by line and splitting the string on the equal sign.

I had some lengthy period of time where I enjoyed regularly helping folks in r/learnprogramming. But it got exhausting fast. For every person putting in a good attempt at learning, there was 10 people who couldn't do the most basic level of googling and content was often extremely repetitive as a result.

The sub also faced a constant stream of people who just wanted to self advertise their own YouTube videos for teaching programming, as if the lack of such was the barrier to learning.

Oh, and soooo many people who clearly just wanted to be told the answer to their homework questions and weren't even hiding that.