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This may just be a cognitive bias on my side of things, but, I've found that a lot of the time when you ask people you don't work with to review your code, they tend to review it savagely, and with the intent of completely, and absolutely destroying you for "likes", "upvotes", etc.

A lot of the time I just want to figure out if I'm going down the right path before I have anything perfect, or breathlessly beautiful to ask for feedback on.

A lot of the time, I'm learning a new technology or a new paradigm and don't know what I'm doing, and, asking for help on Reddit or StackOverflow usually just means being roasted.

Is there any way to avoid the roasts?

Is there a different community everyone goes to?

I currently work as a senior information security analyst and primary software engineer covering absolutely every aspect of design and development, and it's, a lot of work.

I used to work adjacent to product managers, know how all of that works, but, I'm not sure how to put it all together, and particularly, and the one person designing all of this.

Should I just create a set of Excel workbooks containing the different things that I need to do, for example, requirements, use cases, current issues, etc., and then write a script to turn everything in that spreadsheet into a set of JIRA tickets?

Staff engineers, principal engineers, founders, etc., how do you do it?

I'm looking to learn more about different topics in the field that I work in - currently agents, microservices, breach and attack simulation, cyber threat intelligence, vulnerability management, and vulnerability intelligence - among other things, and, don't really know where to go to get better at this type of thing in a community setting.

I work alone, and, it sucks, and, I'd like to find like-minded folks who work on the same types of problems.

These days, are my options mostly HN, Slack, Discord, or, Reddit?

What are some of your favourite websites for asking beginner-level questions where you won't be laughed out of the room for being a beginner say, 30-50% of the time?

Facebook seems hit or miss - some Facebook groups are okay with beginners, others hate them.

Twitter is prone to the no-network effect where you can only really ask questions if you have a strong follower base that's open to answering your questions - nobody really uses hashtags, so, you have to be a "reply guy" if you want to ask questions.

Reddit is nice, but I was banned from Reddit for life for saying that the new Harry Potter game looks good and probably isn't a call to arms for Nazis - trying to be a voice of reason, rather than a Nazi, or, whatever I got banned from the platform for life for - and haven't bothered setting up Tor yet.

Quora seems interesting, but, I don't like it.

Hacker News seems great, but, it's more for intermediate to advanced audiences.

Stack Exchange seems great, but, it's not a great place for beginners - like Hacker News, it seems more well-suited to intermediate to advanced audiences, or, people who can articulate beginner level questions in a way that's non-offensive to more experienced users.

Slack and Discord are probably the most beginner-friendly in my opinion, but only if you either ask very, very, very short questions in the right channels.

Are there any other websites these days that I should be looking at?

I'm looking to learn more about different things as a beginner, since, shamefully, I don't know everything about everything that has ever existed, or will ever exist, but, find that if you want to learn more about something, you need to be an intermediate to advanced-level practitioner first.

I've found that on entertainment-focused websites like Facebook and Twitter I'll get insults and zingers back rather than helpful information if there's any way that my question can be deliberately misinterpreted to make the asker of a given question look bad (i.e. for the lulz).

For example, yesterday I asked if the clothes you wear while riding a bicycle at 20-30kph matter in terms of aerodynamic resistance and most people "laughed" at me for not knowing that air exists, that drag exists, for not being able to solve my question with pen and paper and basic high school math, etc.

Is there any website on the Internet in 2023 where you can ask questions as a beginner, or as someone who doesn't have hundreds to thousands of hours of experience in a given field without getting "owned" and made a mockery of?

Or, is there a more pragmatic, righteous path?

If so, what is the righteous path to asking questions as a beginner - a non-expert in a given area - in 2023?