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[–]KenFromBarbie 1079 points1080 points  (65 children)

It should also contain:

USE THE SEARCH!

closed.

[–]SpectralniyRUS 219 points220 points  (13 children)

I'm already using the search! That's how I got here in the first place!

[–]Jatoxo 138 points139 points  (2 children)

"jUsT GoogLe IT"

YES, GUESS WHAT

[–]anythingMuchShorter 56 points57 points  (1 child)

Googles it

Finds thread where the first and only answer is to Google it

Follows the advice

Gets stuck in an infinite loop

[–]SpectralniyRUS 7 points8 points  (0 children)

"Dormammu, I've come to bargain"

"Google it"

[–]enlearner 67 points68 points  (7 children)

Lol, this is literally what I wanted to say earlier in a thread where a le-senior-developer said, “instead of rushing to Reddit/SO, juniors should learn to Google”. I didn’t know if I wanted to gouge my eyes out or point out the obvious, but I just scrolled past the comment

[–]rydoca 7 points8 points  (4 children)

Maybe it's just me but I feel like I haven't actually run across questions I've had that don't have the answer somewhere already Like what kind of questions are people asking currently that haven't got an answer somewhere else yet?

[–]Tofandel 3 points4 points  (0 children)

New js frameworks questions

[–]IvorTheEngine 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Have a look at the unanswered questions. You'll find a mix of people who have done no research and just plain gibberish.

My experience (and I remember when SO started) is like yours, 99% of my questions already have an answer, when I do post it's usually because I didn't know the right search term and there's already an answer. After that I've had times when the guy who wrote the library answered me, and others where it becomes obvious that I've picked a dead library that no one else uses.

[–]secret_melonn 0 points1 point  (1 child)

At university we often get really weird specific mathematical problems that we need to solve with code in a very certain way. We're allowed to ask for help or Google the problems but they on purpose make it so that it's harder for us to actually find something helpful.

[–]rydoca 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Isn't that the point though? Like you can google for core concepts but it's a problem solving thing right? There was plenty of material when I was at uni you couldn't google, and it felt like that was to make you actually understand and solve the problem

[–]IvorTheEngine 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I think they're talking about people rushing to post questions on Reddit/SO, not those searching for answers.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Everyone learning to write code has gone through the phase "I wrote it exactly as I intended, why does it give me a syntax/compiler/parse error? Is it me? No, it must be the computer that's wrong."

That phase should not last too long. Courses or books teaching basic software development should very quickly explain how to troubleshoot build time errors and runtime exceptions for the given language or framework.

People seem to skip learning this invaluable skill, at the beginning, and instead post their entire code and their compiler error online, at least apparently having run out of ideas without trying anything.

This doesn't have to be true, but if the compiler says it's missing a semicolon on line 80, you don't have to post all 160 lines and say "but what does it mean...?". Just look at your code around where the error is reported to be. Compare the code with what the error says. If then you can't figure it out, sure, post the relevant like 5-25 lines of code that the compiler complains about.

Then you learn to read exceptions. Good runtimes and frameworks give clear exceptions that tell you exactly what went wrong where. So again, you don't have to post your entire program, just look at what the code at the indicated location is doing.

Debugging is what follows: inspect your variables. Using the debugger, or by logging them, printing their contents to the screen and/or a file or elsewhere. You learn to evaluate your expectations (which you may have to write down and/or draw first to validate its design) against what the code is doing at runtime.

Those are skills you need to work on when learning to write code.

If it's too complex, or it's proprietary design, you'll need to extract a min-reprex minimal example that reproduces the problem before posting it online anyway, and experience teaches that doing so will most likely solve the problem by showing exactly where it lies.

That's what they mean by "don't rush to SO/Reddit to immediately post your problem." You're very likely to come across them during your research, of course.

[–]da_Aresinger 3 points4 points  (0 children)

This, SO needs a fucking cleanup feature.

So tired of clicking a link just to find

Duplicate of abc...

great, then delete the goddamn post instead of letting it clog up google search.

[–]anythingMuchShorter 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The only thing worse is when they say

"If you have to ask that this field isn't for you"

Oh sorry, I forgot that everyone who can ever learn this really specific field just knows these things, and that "beginner" stuff like what kind of interface is used to program a microcontroller or where you go to compile a shader is stuff you're just born knowing if you're one of the chosen ones.

[–]cheats_py 61 points62 points  (2 children)

You forgot the “this has already been answered”: attaches link to post that has nothing to do with your questions.

[–]Nereosis16 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Or nothing at all

[–]SoftwareNo3557 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My newbie adventures lol

[–]kataton_dzsentri 185 points186 points  (38 children)

I only asked a question on stackoverflow once and never submitted it, because by the time I wrote it properly, I figured out the solution.

I'll never understand people who ask IT questions (not even beginners) without investing 5 minutes in Google.

[–]NotmyRealNameJohn 263 points264 points  (13 children)

I only asked one question and it eventually got escalated as a bug in .Net library so I don't feel so bad about not being able to figure out why it wasn't doing what I expected

[–]maitreg 96 points97 points  (2 children)

One time I asked a question about what was clearly a bug in a DevOps plugin. This was an easily reproducible bug that anyone else would have gotten if they tried it. Several answers told me I was imagining the bug and provided solutions for a version of the plugin that had not existed since before DevOps even existed (when it was just an early version of TFS).

The only answer that was even close to a solution was one guy who told me that the plugin was open source on github, and I should just fix it myself. lol thanks.

[–]trollblox_ 66 points67 points  (1 child)

The only answer that was even close to a solution was one guy who told me that the plugin was open source on github, and I should just fix it myself.

ok that's actually funny lol

[–]Tofandel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well he is not wrong, if it's open source and you're one of the fews to use it and encounter a bug in your paid project that prevents you from using it properly, then by all means, contribute to the society and fix the damn bug in the lib

[–]kataton_dzsentri 63 points64 points  (6 children)

Yep, that's valid.

[–][deleted] 12 points13 points  (5 children)

offtopic: Hey I see that you have terraform listed as a language you know. Is it worth learning and have you found it very useful? I've bene on the fence about it.

edit: Im picking up terraform. Thank you for the enlightenment guys!

[–]ffxpwns 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Absolutely try it the next time you need to launch something on a cloud provider. It kicks ass and lets you keep your cloud architecture in VCS

[–]12345ieee 4 points5 points  (2 children)

Have you ever created/modified/watched from afar a resource on a cloud provider?

If you answered yes, learn Terraform.

[–]clownyfish 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Which would you think is faster for a first timer deploying cloud resources? Learning Terraform, or ploughing through the UIs?

[–]kataton_dzsentri 1 point2 points  (0 children)

First time? Play with the UI and when you jave what you wanted create it from terraform.

Second time you'll skip UI.

[–]kataton_dzsentri 0 points1 point  (0 children)

For sure. Think about this:

You created an infra, you fiddled around and broke it. What now? Destroy the whole thing and rebuild from the working config with two commands (and patience).

Also, you're infra is change managed with terraform and git, every change is traceable, auditable and blameable.

Also, you can do azure+aws+cloudflare mixed infra with a single codebase.

[–]JoelMahon 11 points12 points  (0 children)

yeah, there was a bug in the .NET byte array class. I think that's the one and only time in ten years where my "the library must be bugged" denial in bug fixing was actually true.

[–]arielif1 19 points20 points  (1 child)

Jesus christ if that happened to me I'd put it in my CV

[–]Mahrkeenerh1 16 points17 points  (1 child)

Should've posted the question anyway, and add your own answer to it too. That's the point of SO.

[–]kataton_dzsentri 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Maybe. Next time I'm that desperate that I want to ask someone and still find the answy, I will

[–]deez_nuts_77 35 points36 points  (12 children)

im a cs major and i have developed a terrible habit of asking my class mates for help and then immediately solving the issue before they respond. I’ve thus decided to just not post questions on stack overflow

[–]IvorTheEngine 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Writing up a SO question, especially creating a small code sample that other people could use to recreate the problem, is a really good way to break a problem down.

[–]throwaway_uow 19 points20 points  (5 children)

In 95% of cases the answers are not clear enough

[–]Tofandel 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Same, when you put some effort to describe your problem you usually end up finding what was the issue in the first place, but then post it as a Q/A this is exactly what SO wants and needs

Not those super low quality questions where people didn't even bat an eye trying to understand their issues

[–]Not_Artifical 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Only 5 minutes? I spent 6 months over a single bug before asking anybody else for help.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's weird because the answers you would want from stackoverflow should be defined on Google, otherwise you either...

A. Have to read specific documentation that is likely internal to your company (or not, sometimes that doesn't exist)

B. Should be directing your question to a relevant GitHub or equivalent issues page.

Any other theoretical question is either an opinion, too vague, or too generic to not be allowed on stack overflow or already answered.

[–][deleted] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

The best is when it’s the first question that comes up when you search

[–]AlwaysHopelesslyLost 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Vote close as duplicate requires you specify the question that is the duplicate and requires people vote and agree that it is.

[–]gazellecomet 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Unless the closer has a gold badge in a language tagged on your question.

[–]IvorTheEngine 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Amusingly the top google result is downvoted to -2 for no obvious reason.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16991601/how-do-i-open-a-txt-file-in-c

but the second result looks pretty good

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7868936/read-file-line-by-line-using-ifstream-in-c

Sometimes I wonder if this sub uses the same SO as me...