Answering one's own question

Michael A Barnhart

David Chamberlain wrote: Apparently, just a few minutes longer and many of those questions would be self-solved, If it really is a few minutes I absolutly agree. For myself I have asked a number of times and though the response(s) did not directly help more than once made me think of it in a new light or point to some resource I had skipped. With that I came up with the solution and posted back. Now this is usually next day or two. David Chamberlain wrote: to post to CP immediately upon not knowing something is a disturbing trend Do you want to quote Socrates or Ben Franklin here?:-D "I will find a new sig someday."

Ted Ferenc

You are forgetting Sod's law, it has happened to all of us I am sure. "You can spend days trying to solve a problem, when you call a colleague over to explain this impossible to solve problem, you realise what the solution is within seconds of asking your colleague to help!"

If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants. - Isaac Newton 1676

David Chamberlain

I absolutely agree that asking for help is a good thing, and that sometimes just by explaining the problem, the solution is seen. That has been demonstrated over and over. I guess I just see a trend of giving up too easily, and perhaps this manifests itself in ways outside of CP. Many times, just being able to formulate the right question brings forth enough thought to solve the problem. Certainly when trying to design something, one must think about what that thing is supposed to do. Dave "You can say that again." -- Dept. of Redundancy Dept.

Wouter Dhondt

Not always. I had a problem, which I've been working on for 3 days. I had no clue whatsoever to a solution, so I posted in the related forum (the IOCPServer example[^]). Only to stumble on the solution a few hours later... :-O At least people whom asked questions should have the decency to post if they found a solution. This way other people know you found a solution, and won't waste their time in helping you... ----------------------- New and improved: kwakkelflap.com My second CP article: MAP files[^] while (!:bob:.IsDrunk()) { :bob:.Drink( :beer: ); }

Ted Ferenc

David Chamberlain wrote: Many times, just being able to formulate the right question brings forth enough thought to solve the problem I do agree with you statement above, which was my Sod's law description. it is frustrating when it appears that a search on CP or the Net would give the answer, or just looking in the FAQ for that topic. Also you do learn more when you have solved the problem yourself, rather than cut/pasting a solution that someone has given you.

If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants. - Isaac Newton 1676

benjymous

Yeah, in many cases people just come here and ask a question straight away, but it's unfair to assume that the person hasn't thought about the problem at all. I regularly find that when I get stuck on a problem, the act of writing it out in a way that I can email it to someone else for advice will clarify the problem in my mind enough that I'll often realise the answer before anyone manages to reply (even if I've spent hours pondering over it before) -- Help me! I'm turning into a grapefruit!

David Chamberlain

benjymous wrote: ... it's unfair to assume that the person hasn't thought about the problem at all. I guess I am looking at the time between when the question is posted and when their own answer is posted. If that is on the order of a couple/few hours, then it looks like there hasn't been much thinking. benjymous wrote: ... the act of writing it out in a way that I can email it to someone else for advice ... The trick to learn, then, is to write it out, see if that brings forth the solution, and THEN hit the send button. It's a picky point, but then this was only a rant. Dave "You can say that again." -- Dept. of Redundancy Dept.

Maximilien

sometimes, it happens to me. When I'm about to ask a technical question, I'll try getting as much information I can so I can ask a well formulated question. Most of the time, I will answer my own question that I'm writting before even posting it to the board; not because I'm lazy, but because having to formulate a question to someone else forces me to make the problem as clear as possible. When confronted with a problem, one can just dig and dig, and never find an answer, but if one ask someone else, it will become clearer, and most of the time will lead to other avenues of research and solutions. The problems I think is that people post questions without really understanding the problem, they will ask for help, and they can't even explain it to themselves!. If the question is well formed, and the questioner is just missing the single puzzle piece that will give him the solution, I think every question is valid. Max.

Gary Kirkham

How do you know how long they have been working the problem...There is usually nothing explicitly mentioned in a post about the duration of the effort. I am not saying your are wrong...I am saying that B doesn't necessarily follow from A. ;) Gary Kirkham A working Program is one that has only unobserved bugs I thought I wanted a career, turns out I just wanted paychecks

Brad Jennings

I myself am guilty of posting a question and then finding an answer myself a few hours later but this has only happened a couple of times. I only post a question in desperate situations where I cannot find a solution AND don't have the knowledge to formulate a solution myself. Although some of the instances are people posting a question and then suddenly seeing the problem in a new light, I think you're right that people should spend more time on the problem before asking a question as doing otherwise only wastes other peoples' time. Brad Jennings

Stephane Rodriguez

- Against posters : First of all, at least 50% of posters (especially Cp's) don't give a shit about *how* they post. They just post to a dozen newsgroups/boards, go to sleep, and then go back next day to collect the answers. That's my experience they don't give a shit about the human beings taking their time to answer. That's internet, so they think they don't need to show any kind of respect, whatever happens. - What's bad generally speaking around posts : If either the Cp and MSDN search engine were not raw shit, may be some of them would be more inclined to spend a few minutes hunting a possible answer before they post. It must be said at this point that the only real searchability of Cp is through the section nav bar on the left. But even at this point, there are too many articles, arranged by technical keyword (language, rough API topic), instead of semantical keyword. Period. Google search engine sucks as well, for at least two reasons : - a lot of sites are not "covered" by Google, thus you will never get your answers from these sites at all. For instance, only a few (if any at all) .NET posts are going to be related to the dotnet247.com site content, a very specialized .NET KB, although I have found 100% of answers over my wonderings there. - the keywords we use suck, most of time : change the keyword, and you get your answer in the top 3 results! We all need education. That's where you have the foreign language barrier.

Chris Losinger

i have always had excellent results with google (on the newsgroups, especially). my keyword choices apparently do not suck. -c

Thin Lizard

ThumbNailer

Ted Ferenc

groups.google.com does give me good results also, I do sort of agree that the net does get missused, when people can not be bothered to find out on their own how to solve the problem. I am amayed at the patience of the people who answer these requests. But on the whole I have received help via the net and I am happy to try and help other people, even though I know I should suggest to the poster where to find the info rather than soving their problem. Sorrz about the bad spelling mz kezboard has gone into German, must be the weekend! Z and Y kezs are swopped.

If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants. - Isaac Newton 1676

Stephane Rodriguez

Ted Ferenc wrote: groups.google.com does give me good results also, I do sort of agree that the net does get missused, when people can not be bothered to find out on their own how to solve the problem. I am amayed at the patience of the people who answer these requests. What I don't like about answers is you can't capitalize on them. I have been that naive many times already, just to learn I had wasted my time. Let's assume you spend time to provide a comprehensive answer, thinking that it's going to be looked up by others later thanks to search engines. This just to see the same question a couple of days later, and again, and again, and .... Ted Ferenc wrote: But on the whole I have received help via the net and I am happy to try and help other people, even though I know I should suggest to the poster where to find the info rather than soving their problem. Don't even try it. Insult guaranteed. Ted Ferenc wrote: groups.google.com A funny note about google's groups (supposed to expose both Deja archives, and general purpose news servers) : try to lookup alt.music.mp3.kazaa. Yes, that's one of the filtered group. X|

peterchen

I usually find a reason while I ask the question (good thing), or think about a completely different solution after readign some suggestions (bad thing on some places, as I then feel no obligation to follow the thread anymore)

Those who not hear the music think the dancers are mad. [sighist] [Agile Programming]

Ted Ferenc

.S.Rod. wrote: Don't even try it. Insult guaranteed. I think I will, just to see what happens, after all I am a software guy, we love a challenge! I generally answer these sort of posts if I am bored and fancy a bit of light relief, although there are a few I just ignore, usually from those people who are always posting simple question on what seems a daily basis I do agree Deja was better

If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants. - Isaac Newton 1676

Christian Graus

I'm not one who voted on your post, because it is appropriate, therefore all I can vote on is your opinion, and you've got the right to that. But I disagree. I've done this several times now, and the thing you fail to consider is that maybe, just maybe, I spent an hour looking for a solution, and so decided to post, and THEN kept looking myself. I'm sure others are the same. If they ( we ) aren't looking, how is it that the post is followed up with 'don't worry, I found it' ? How does one find something without looking for it ? Christian No offense, but I don't really want to encourage the creation of another VB developer. - Larry Antram 22 Oct 2002
C# will attract all comers, where VB is for IT Journalists and managers - Michael P Butler 05-12-2002
Again, you can screw up a C/C++ program just as easily as a VB program. OK, maybe not as easily, but it's certainly doable. - Jamie Nordmeyer - 15-Nov-2002

David Chamberlain

In one of my earliest jobs, my manager's favorite question was "How can we keep going?" and while he used it sparingly, he used it mostly when I would approach him saying that I was stuck. That wasn't terribly unusual back then, because much of what we had to process was information that we were obtaining from other people. If we didn't have all the necessary info and it didn't look like we were going to get it soon (or easily), I would report to him that I thought I was stuck. He would then reply "Okay, how can we keep going?" Time after time, in situation after situation, he encouraged in me his insight that "there was more than one way to skin a cat" and encouraged me to always look for other ways around a problem. Over the years, I have worked with many developers whom I refer to as "hip-shooters," modeled after the old western quick-draw shoot-outs. Here's a problem ... quick-draw a solution. No, that's not it, quick-draw again. Try this, try that, try something else. Shooting from the hip, quickly, not spending any time thinking, just reacting, just trying the first thing that comes to mind, just guessing. So, when you say "I spent an hour looking for a solution," I wonder if that hour was spent hip-shooting or if it was spent really thinking and trying the best you can (the generic "you", not the specific "you"), looking at different angles, considering different approaches. And of course, there are times when we just do not know the answer, so all the looking in the world wouldn't help us find what we don't know to look for. My original post indicated an apparent trend toward giving up too easily, not toward posting questions, or posting questions and continuing to look. I even do that, and when I am stuck and looking for a solution that I don't have enough information to be able to develop with what I already know, I am hoping that someone can guide me in the right direction. In fact, I like the questions where people write "Where can I find info about ...?" or "Can someone point me to a site that explains ...?" Dave "You can say that again." -- Dept. of Redundancy Dept.