Question, about ... Questions
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Well, not so much a question as an observation. It seems that a lot of the forum posts are a bunch of incapable John Does/Fred Bloggs' trying to keep themselves employed. Has anyone else thought that? It can sound derogatory, but I've seen a few questions where people are just taking advantage of the patience of others. One in particular looked like an entire application was being asked for. Does anyone have any thoughts on it, the fact that your code might end up keeping Bob in a job and ending up in a commercial application, with no benefit to you, who took the time to go over the 'grammatically-perfect' problem and create a solution? Or maybe I'm just naive and stingy...
Yet another spam post on yet another forum! I am the lazy one, who sleeps as it suits him, codes what he wishes, and has many years to look forward to. I love being a student.
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Well, not so much a question as an observation. It seems that a lot of the forum posts are a bunch of incapable John Does/Fred Bloggs' trying to keep themselves employed. Has anyone else thought that? It can sound derogatory, but I've seen a few questions where people are just taking advantage of the patience of others. One in particular looked like an entire application was being asked for. Does anyone have any thoughts on it, the fact that your code might end up keeping Bob in a job and ending up in a commercial application, with no benefit to you, who took the time to go over the 'grammatically-perfect' problem and create a solution? Or maybe I'm just naive and stingy...
Yet another spam post on yet another forum! I am the lazy one, who sleeps as it suits him, codes what he wishes, and has many years to look forward to. I love being a student.
No matter what, the odds are that most of the answers provided here end up in someone's homework or in a commerical application. It's just a question of how to respond to people who basically ask you to write their whole app. I generally try to explain why that's not the way things work. I'm more disappointed how many questions can be answered by typing them verbatim into google, such as 'how do I get data from SQL Server using VB6 ?'
Christian Graus - Microsoft MVP - C++ Metal Musings - Rex and my new metal blog "I am working on a project that will convert a FORTRAN code to corresponding C++ code.I am not aware of FORTRAN syntax" ( spotted in the C++/CLI forum )
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No matter what, the odds are that most of the answers provided here end up in someone's homework or in a commerical application. It's just a question of how to respond to people who basically ask you to write their whole app. I generally try to explain why that's not the way things work. I'm more disappointed how many questions can be answered by typing them verbatim into google, such as 'how do I get data from SQL Server using VB6 ?'
Christian Graus - Microsoft MVP - C++ Metal Musings - Rex and my new metal blog "I am working on a project that will convert a FORTRAN code to corresponding C++ code.I am not aware of FORTRAN syntax" ( spotted in the C++/CLI forum )
Yeah, well these days near enough anything can be answered via Google. Except "How to kill Chuck Norris"...
Yet another spam post on yet another forum! I am the lazy one, who sleeps as it suits him, codes what he wishes, and has many years to look forward to. I love being a student.
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Well, not so much a question as an observation. It seems that a lot of the forum posts are a bunch of incapable John Does/Fred Bloggs' trying to keep themselves employed. Has anyone else thought that? It can sound derogatory, but I've seen a few questions where people are just taking advantage of the patience of others. One in particular looked like an entire application was being asked for. Does anyone have any thoughts on it, the fact that your code might end up keeping Bob in a job and ending up in a commercial application, with no benefit to you, who took the time to go over the 'grammatically-perfect' problem and create a solution? Or maybe I'm just naive and stingy...
Yet another spam post on yet another forum! I am the lazy one, who sleeps as it suits him, codes what he wishes, and has many years to look forward to. I love being a student.
Ninja-the-Nerd wrote:
It seems that a lot of the forum posts are a bunch of incapable John Does/Fred Bloggs' trying to keep themselves employed.
My impression from some of the questions (mainly to the C# forum where I regularly lurk) is that some of the posters do not exercise due diligence in articulating their questions well. Instead, they dump unformatted code into a post and hope that someone can pick out the problem. My eyes glaze over when I read those kinds of posts, and I admire those that attempt some kind of reasonable response. In some cases, a poster may not know where to start in tackling a problem but can at least provide enough information so that a dialog can begin. As things progress, hopefully the information they need comes to light and they can go on their way with an approach to solving their problem. And the person(s) who replied to them can enjoy the satisfaction of knowing they helped someone. In my opinion it's about the poster with the question doing as much as they can to articulate their needs so that those who wish to help can hopefully meet the poster halfway with a possible solution. I don't know if the above addresses your issue about people using the forums to keep themselves afloat at their jobs. I guess my point is that if the posters do their part to at least appear as though they have some kind of clue, it wouldn't matter to me if they use the answer to help themselves out on the job. I'd hope they'd return the favor if I needed help with a problem and posted a question to one of the forums.
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Ninja-the-Nerd wrote:
It seems that a lot of the forum posts are a bunch of incapable John Does/Fred Bloggs' trying to keep themselves employed.
My impression from some of the questions (mainly to the C# forum where I regularly lurk) is that some of the posters do not exercise due diligence in articulating their questions well. Instead, they dump unformatted code into a post and hope that someone can pick out the problem. My eyes glaze over when I read those kinds of posts, and I admire those that attempt some kind of reasonable response. In some cases, a poster may not know where to start in tackling a problem but can at least provide enough information so that a dialog can begin. As things progress, hopefully the information they need comes to light and they can go on their way with an approach to solving their problem. And the person(s) who replied to them can enjoy the satisfaction of knowing they helped someone. In my opinion it's about the poster with the question doing as much as they can to articulate their needs so that those who wish to help can hopefully meet the poster halfway with a possible solution. I don't know if the above addresses your issue about people using the forums to keep themselves afloat at their jobs. I guess my point is that if the posters do their part to at least appear as though they have some kind of clue, it wouldn't matter to me if they use the answer to help themselves out on the job. I'd hope they'd return the favor if I needed help with a problem and posted a question to one of the forums.
My comment was probably a little harsh but sometimes I just look at someone's code and get a Stop Error before being able to think about it. At the end of the day I probably couldn't solve half the problems in the forums. But, I have my head stuck somewhere dark - like under my bed sheets...:D Not too sure about the problems in the C# forum, how they're obscure, I'm a VB person but the problems in there are generally bigger fish (I suppose subtle bugs are never to do with VB, because it's simple enough). Sometimes there just seems no visible effort put into solving it beforehand, and that gets me. Damn, I used to be an optimist. What the hell happened? Oh yeah, I started caring about efficiency... I guess, If I wrote code for someone, I'm writing it and giving them it, so it wouldn't matter for me where it ends up. Note to self: be rational.
Yet another spam post on yet another forum! I am the lazy one, who sleeps as it suits him, codes what he wishes, and has many years to look forward to. I love being a student.
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My comment was probably a little harsh but sometimes I just look at someone's code and get a Stop Error before being able to think about it. At the end of the day I probably couldn't solve half the problems in the forums. But, I have my head stuck somewhere dark - like under my bed sheets...:D Not too sure about the problems in the C# forum, how they're obscure, I'm a VB person but the problems in there are generally bigger fish (I suppose subtle bugs are never to do with VB, because it's simple enough). Sometimes there just seems no visible effort put into solving it beforehand, and that gets me. Damn, I used to be an optimist. What the hell happened? Oh yeah, I started caring about efficiency... I guess, If I wrote code for someone, I'm writing it and giving them it, so it wouldn't matter for me where it ends up. Note to self: be rational.
Yet another spam post on yet another forum! I am the lazy one, who sleeps as it suits him, codes what he wishes, and has many years to look forward to. I love being a student.
Ninja-the-Nerd wrote:
(I suppose subtle bugs are never to do with VB, because it's simple enough).
VB is full of subtle bugs. Casts you didn't ask for, with side effects that are hard to spot, the fact that () can call a method or index an array, VB is all about the subtlety.
Christian Graus - Microsoft MVP - C++ Metal Musings - Rex and my new metal blog "I am working on a project that will convert a FORTRAN code to corresponding C++ code.I am not aware of FORTRAN syntax" ( spotted in the C++/CLI forum )
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Ninja-the-Nerd wrote:
(I suppose subtle bugs are never to do with VB, because it's simple enough).
VB is full of subtle bugs. Casts you didn't ask for, with side effects that are hard to spot, the fact that () can call a method or index an array, VB is all about the subtlety.
Christian Graus - Microsoft MVP - C++ Metal Musings - Rex and my new metal blog "I am working on a project that will convert a FORTRAN code to corresponding C++ code.I am not aware of FORTRAN syntax" ( spotted in the C++/CLI forum )
Christian Graus wrote:
VB is full of subtle bugs. Casts you didn't ask for, with side effects that are hard to spot, the fact that () can call a method or index an array, VB is all about the subtlety.
Well Said Christian Graus.
Regards, Satips.
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Well, not so much a question as an observation. It seems that a lot of the forum posts are a bunch of incapable John Does/Fred Bloggs' trying to keep themselves employed. Has anyone else thought that? It can sound derogatory, but I've seen a few questions where people are just taking advantage of the patience of others. One in particular looked like an entire application was being asked for. Does anyone have any thoughts on it, the fact that your code might end up keeping Bob in a job and ending up in a commercial application, with no benefit to you, who took the time to go over the 'grammatically-perfect' problem and create a solution? Or maybe I'm just naive and stingy...
Yet another spam post on yet another forum! I am the lazy one, who sleeps as it suits him, codes what he wishes, and has many years to look forward to. I love being a student.
Someone noted that they look like from people jobs were outsourced to, and they dutifully backsource it to those that lost their job to them and now have all the time to browse the internet and help for free.
We are a big screwed up dysfunctional psychotic happy family - some more screwed up, others more happy, but everybody's psychotic joint venture definition of CP
My first real C# project | Linkify!|FoldWithUs! | sighist