Hacker News Reader

Comment by pavanky | Hacker News Reader

The problem the user was facing had nothing to do with java. I'd say that is pretty much off topic.

It had everything to do with programming, which is on topic.

It's a pet peeve of mine. At least 10% of the time I google for a answer to a programming question it takes me to a StackOverflow question... which has been marked off-topic.

If all your searches are "which language is better?", "what IDE should I use?" and "what is already in the documentation that I should consider a hidden feature?" then yes, it will be closed as off topic.

What an unnecessarily antagonistic and intellectually dishonest response. It's obvious from the GP's post that he's talking about actual problems with possible solutions, and for what it's worth I've experienced the same phenomenon.

Give your interlocutors the benefit of the doubt, it makes for a much more productive conversation.

How was the user to know that the problem had nothing to do with java without knowing what the problem was? From the user's point of view, the answer could have easily been something like "oh yeah, java prints the 'B' character very slowly for xyz reason".

According to this logic, is asking whether this is a java problem also off topic, because it's not a java problem? So you have to know the answer to know if the question is on topic. Great rules.

Lawyers have a saying "Never Ask A Question If You Don’t Know The Answer". Not sure how it applies, but reminded me of it.

I'm going to guess this actually means "A lawyer defending or prosecuting a client should never ask a question in a courtroom if they don't already know the answer"

Usually I understand why a question is marked as offtopic, but I think an issue like this, that someone writing Java is encountering, is definitely on topic.

If a future person were to run into that problem I think that is the most appropriate location for the answer to reside.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com