i grew up basically alone for most of my childhood, sure i did have close friends at times but we often strayed apart due to just being away from one another both distance wise and age wise

i lived outside of the bounds of the school i decided to go to and was the youngest meaning that i had to ride my bike roughly twenty minutes to get to the closest bus stop and everyone was more mature than i was

it was hard i suppose, but it's what i knew - i wanted to go to school with the people i had been with since the beginning, not be introduced to an entirely new group of people, i was already uncomfortable enough around the people i knew

growing up as an only child you spend a lot of time alone, your mind just, wanders.. it's pretty easy to get a singular focus on one thing and become incredibly good at that thing as that's all you can focus on as friends and family aren't there to occupy your time. i don't say this for empathy it's just who i am and how i was raised

raised like this you also become pretty close to entirely self reliant, if you don't know something you either have to look it up(the internet), or fabricate something(lie) for fear that you don't know something someone else does as you're afraid they'll judge you for not knowing something which the rest of society must, after all why would they be talking about it or asking you about it if they thought you didn't know

you can learn programming entirely by yourself, there's no reason to go to school or reason to ask for someone else's help. you can just learn it. it's a blessing and a curse

the first time you do have to ask for help is typically in a group setting or to gain access to some service you don't currently have

the most common set of patterns people run into when needing help in programming are around access to a thing, or understanding a broader system or bug.

one of the greatest articles around programming and i suppose debugging in general is https://stackoverflow.com/help/how-to-ask

i never even really considered that it's applicable to all of life, not just programming

if you want to get help from someone, first off, determine if you actually need their help or if you're just being lazy and haven't attempted the steps yourself or gone down some rabbit hole of troubleshooting

consider asking a friend for advice

don't open the conversation with "my girlfriend cheated on me what should i do"

someone with experience in relationships may respond to that question with a series of other "debugging" type questions. "well, have you spent time with her" "do you two get along" "were there signs"

to someone with experience in a relationship, "my girlfriend cheated on me what should i do" is quite silly

open with a series of "here's what i've dones" - "hey my girlfriend cheated on me, i've been attempting to talk to her, she isn't responding, i spend time with her and have done everything in my ability to communicate and have been a good partner"

then the answer is simple

the same goes for programming and every other aspect of life

"hey this form isn't submitting" - to an experienced programmer cmd+option+i is second nature, it is the first thing you'd do and you'd follow a series of questions until you got to the answer

also, it's always good to ensure the person that you're asking has absolutely zero incentive in the outcome of your question else their answer could be skewed in a direction of their desire

saying i don't know, but taking necessary steps to get to the answer is a superpower and ensuring the person you're asking doesn't have an incentive involved in the answer, determining if they do is dependent on how much you trust this person, and what your relationship in the past has been like(transactional, or mutual)