PPMD of course will always be in our hearts simply for the way he played at the time, but Armada quickly became my favorite smasher since it was so obvious that he has the work ethic, discipline, and brainpower that so many people lack.  Everybody wants a quick answer, whether it's a practice method, some sort of new software, or physical tool that supposedly will shortcut them to success.  It really bugs me when people so obviously ask questions that they put zero work into figuring out on their own.  To me I think Armada represents that virtue of simply putting in the effort and figuring out things yourself rather than relying on being handheld by anybody.  And I know for a fact that he hates this attitude of looking for quick answers without putting in the homework.

Of course, I understand that community teachings and knowledge sharing is a very great thing, and important to us all.  It's only because of countless resources (mostly available on the internet) that I've been able to learn so much in my life.  But every. single. thing. that I've ever gotten good at, has been on my own.  Music production.  Game dev.  Tetris.  Glowsticking.  Video Games.  Cooking.  Poi.  Even social dance, to some extent.  I've never had a mentor in any of these things, I've never needed a community to learn from, I've never felt the need or even desire to ask other people questions directly.  Because so many of these things, you can simply just put in the homework to figure out yourself.

How many smashers do you think would get a ton of leverage from 20XX and unclepunch but just "never got around to figuring it out"?  How many people never figured out how to use a DAW because they didn't even bother reading the manual?  Maybe it's just my learning style, I never got anything out of institutionalized learning anyways -- I would sit there in elementary school simply reading the textbooks and absorbing the material by myself.

In more recent years I had become more involved in trying to knowledge share back to the social dance community.  That has been a fulfilling and rewarding experience, but I've realized over time that even though I think that's valuable, I think I'll always still respect those people who simply put in the work to figure out everything themselves.  Because that's the way that I always worked, too.

There is of course a time and a place for discussion, for community iteration, and for feedback.  But it's only after you've put in the homework.  Don't ask questions that you could get answered by just looking up yourself in a few minutes.  It's really not respectful of people's time.  Do your damn homework.  Go to office hours because you =already tried= to do the homework and failed, not because you just want someone to feed you the answer.  Do you really think all of us got to where we are because somebody else held our hand along the way?

That said, it's great when someone who actually DID the homework wants to ask a question about something more advanced.  These are the kinds of questions that are =rewarding= to answer, because you get the sense that you were actually an invaluable asset here, not just a substitute for a little bit of effort or a replacement for google.