These are the people that will winnow themselves out, as they move forward. I’ve been a mod on the FCC discord for a while, a contributor to the news feed, and I occasionally say something that makes sense.
There are many who are not yet confident in themselves, regardless. Some of this is because of the newness of the whole field, some might be attributable to the whole “Impostors” thing, some might simply be the difficulty in learning both a coding language and the “meta-language” that surrounds it. There is a lot of jargon that those of us who have been at this a while are comfortable with, that new folks simply aren’t.
Sure, we can be bothered if someone asks questions about every single small step, but we can’t know their learning style or their intent. We can’t know they’re here to earn the certification and move on, until we see their forum post about “Woohoo, I got all the certifications in six days! Bow down and fear me, I’m a coding GOD!” (And yes, while paraphrased, that happens).
Some start this, and get through the HTML/CSS, get into the JS, and feel overwhelmed. Or life happens. Or whatever. They take a break for a few weeks or months, and come back. And yes - they will ask many of the same questions again, because they either need to confirm what they think they knew or because they simply forgot. It happens.
I do get a bit bothered when someone posts an entire working solution here and says “Here’s my code, how would you improve it?” First, that blows a hole in the side of others who might search the forum, they see your complete solution. Second, that takes up a lot of bandwidth talking about things that may or may not apply - my solutions might involve techniques they haven’t learned yet, so they’re useless at that point in their education. But they ask, and I can’t know their intent. So what’s the harm in answering?
Some are worried about breaking something or not doing a lesson right, or feeling that they’re stuck after working on a lesson for twenty minutes (or two days, or a week). They take as long as they take, and the questions to help them past the hump? Are welcome. The answer that simply gives them everything without guiding them to a solution they find… that one bothers me. Guidance, not gimme’s, people!
The “I’m nearly 50” thing? I was having a conversation with someone who asked about how long I’d been at this. I had been coding for a while before React was a thing. Well, before jQuery was a thing. Well, before jScript became Javascript 1.0. Well, before HTML 1.0. In fact, before the internet officially existed. I learned on mainframes. So I’ve seen many things, I’ve seen many ways of learning, I’ve learned in many different ways.
My point? You can’t know the intent or learning style of the person asking the question. You can provide guidance and mentorship, but you can’t assume anything about that person that they have not explicitly told you. Being kind and being helpful doesn’t cost you anything.
If they are simply lazy learners, looking to StackOverflow-copy-paste solutions from here to get the certification, then when they’re in the work force they’ll face a rude awakening. Their karma in that case, my conscience is clear.