Comment by mettamage | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mettamage | Hacker News Reader

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I am surprised that no one linked the What Have You Tried article by Matt Gemmell.

http://mattgemmell.com/what-have-you-tried/

This is how I almost never got my SO topics closed. I state beforehand what I have tried, how certain SO questions may look related but are still not giving me enough knowledge to solve my problem. I do my best to make a convincing argument that I need help and can't make it on my own. A few days later and I get my answer :) (and sometimes I figure it out myself which takes a while)

I agree with the HNers that say that someone needs to struggle a bit first. It's necessary to develop the emotional coping skills, because programming can have very frustrating moments. And they can answer "what have you tried?"

Beginners need to understand: why would I put more time into solving someone else's problems than the person asking me the question? I notice that a lot of friction comes from that place. Sometimes beginners don't realize it, but I've seen some lazy people as well. When I am on the beginning side I really try to take this into account and value the time of the expert.

StackOverflow serves a dual purpose: (1) to answer the immediate question of the original poster, and (2) to serve as a reference for anyone encountering the same problem in the future. I'd say that (2) is more important - good question/answer pairs on SO have helped hundreds or even thousands of developers beyond the original poster. Answering "what have you tried" may help with purpose (1), but is often just distracting for (2). If I'm looking for a way to do X, reading through someone's failed attempts to do X is a waste of time. And this whole notion of making someone "struggle a bit" is entirely misplaced when you keep purpose (2) in mind. Let's say I'm not a CSS expert and I'm trying to find a way to make a sticky page footer. I can "struggle for a bit", spend maybe 30-60min researching the topic and come up with a solution myself, without ever involving StackOverflow. Multiply this by 1,000 developers facing the same problem, and you have 500-1000 hours of wasted developer effort. Compare this to spending 15min to write a precisely-worded question (but without "steps you've tried"), and an expert spending 15min to write up an answer. From that point on, the piece of knowledge is available to anyone, enormously amplifying the impact of this initial time investment. Of course I'm oversimplifying, but I see this amplification effect continuously ignored in discussions of StackOverflow posting guidelines. I think this attitude of "show your work" and "make the original poster struggle a bit" comes from the days of IRC/Usenet questions, where an answer to a question only helped one person, not thousands.

I forgot a bit about purpose 2, good point.

"And this whole notion of making someone "struggle a bit" is entirely misplaced when you keep purpose (2) in mind."

I didn't mean it that way. Struggling a bit also implies Googling an answer or looking things up on StackOverflow, it's part of the struggle before you ask someone (online or IRL). Specifically, querying Google, querying SO and typing in the question on SO and then clicking on the suggestions first are all part of the struggle since you haven't asked a person yet.

"Compare this to spending 15min to write a precisely-worded question (but without "steps you've tried"), and an expert spending 15min to write up an answer. "

When I think about it, a precisely worded question implicitly shows the struggle. Implicitly showing it is more effective than telling a whole story about it.

Actually, I've found the "what I've tried that didn't work" section to be useful quite often when I land on SO from a google search. Sometimes the questioner lists something that I didn't think of that does work for my specific problem, or it's what makes me realize that the answer given won't actually apply to my problem before I waste a bunch of time on it. Sometimes it's the only part that actually matches what I searched for, so I wouldn't have even found the question with a useful answer without it.

"What you've tried" often provides the missing context that allows a) someone to actually answer the question correctly and b) for later searchers to find it.

I detest busy work, but in this case it actually often needs to be done unless you're relying on ESP.

"Beginners need to understand: why would I put more time into solving someone else's problems than the person asking me the question?"

Is this because of how pervasive instant gratification [and entitlement] have become?

Why would you call it instant gratification if the question also applies to when the expert is a beginner in another field? Also, edge cases should be nuanced. For example, typing up an answer in 2 minutes since you know a lot about the problem area in general, while the question was one sentence.

For me, it also shows motivation on the person asking the question (and vice versa). It's not effective to help someone who isn't going to do anything with the information.

I don't see how entitlement and instant gratification play a role.

I should have been more clear. Because of the pervasiveness of instant gratification (and entitlement) in society today, does it seem like those asking questions, strike that, wanting answers just want the answer to their immediate "problem" without having to invest their own time in researching an answer and even minimally writing up what they have already tried/done to find an answer?

>For me, it also shows motivation on the person asking the question (and vice versa). It's not effective to help someone who isn't going to do anything with the information.

Amen! My in-laws keep talking about listing some items for sale on Craigslist. They usually ask me how much they think they could/should sell things for. I usually stand mute. The implication is that they want me to list the items for them. If they aren't motivated to minimally research or determine an asking price themselves I figure they aren't motivated enough to actually sell the thing. (Not to mention their motivation tends to be "what's the most I can get for this" while mine in the situation would be "what's the highest price I can ask and still ensure this thing is gone with in 2 weeks". Additionally, if I list the thing, I'll probably have to deal with the communications and exchanging the goods... no thanks.)

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