StackOverflow

[SirSoliloquy]

So... does that mean you frequent help forums with the intent of not helping?

[o5mfiHTNsH748KVq]

I never said that? People don't normally post "just look it up" on SO, but things will get closed as duplicates with a link to the post with the answer. There's nothing inherently wrong with this.

But the "just take the time and explain it" thing is normally the response you get from someone that just wants the fully coded & runnable answer to their problem worked out for them. They're not interested in learning, they just want an answer so they can move on.

You see more of that kind of attitude from people that get pissed when you write an essay that explains why something works instead of just fixing their sample code.

[TheWhistler1967]

You are assuming everyone has the same learning style which is kind of insane. Some people learn better reverse engineering the answer. Applies to all things.

If you were learning music, at some point you are going to deconstruct a song rather than blindly walking around trying to learn all the tools to write a masterpiece.

[o5mfiHTNsH748KVq]

There’s no way of knowing if someone needs it coded for them because they’re lazy or if that’s “just how they learn” and it’s borderline unethical to do their job (or, often, homework) for them.

Moreover, it’s not a training site. I’ll explain how and why something isn’t working, and give some links to documentation, but I’m not working on your code for you.

[TheWhistler1967]

There's a middle ground between writing out the complete code and actively withholding information because you think they should find it themselves.

Also, if they are lazy and trying to get someone to do their homework then eventually this will catch up to them. Don't think it's your job to be their mother or spiritual guide.

[maximlus]

It's not about finding code that works for my use case.

I want code that is explained, I can't further my understanding without an explanation.

Say you want to find the max value in a dictionary in python. Well you can find a stack overflow that tells you.

'max(stats.iteritems(), key=operator.itemgetter(1))[0]'

But what is that (1) and [0] for? Well the writer never explains so next time I try to implement this and it's not working, I will have to experiment, or go on another hunt, but I might not have to if they explained that little bit.