SO is great as long as the answers aren't some form of "Why are you even trying to solve this problem?" Or "Just use this library instead of doing it yourself" without any actual answer included.
They should atleast be something like "this is what you can do/look into, BUT ...".
I usually ask "how do I best do xyz with this library?" If I cannot find a good answer elsewhere online. Usually the developers answer and I am able to use their commentary to solve my problem. I know for one thing my answer will be public after I ask so at least it will become part of the selfdocumentation that arises from both stack overflow and issue systems.
Worse case they have to add something and put my request in some sort of backlog. I always say thanks when I ask someone for help though. But I never flat out ask for new features because for all I know they already have a defined way of solving the problem I have.
Reminds me of my experience with Stackoverflow. I tried to solve a very specific problem with Windows installers. I only got some responses from oldtimers that basically said “why would you do such a thing?”and similar. It felt extremely unwelcoming. It’s ok to not answer but why be so dismissive? I guess the only questions they like are things like “how do I calculate 2+2 in python?”. Anything more complicated is not acceptable.
As a pro programmer - if I have a problem that I didn't manage to find/google a solution, then it's probably something crazy tough and that only a person in my specific niche can help with. It would probably be too expensive for a service to find such a person & to pay him or her for a reply.
On the other hand, I can imagine novices finding use with this site.
I think "professionals who can't figure this obscure things out" is the best use-case for SO, really. Perhaps being a professional is something to be required. I'm speaking only from my own experience. I have only ever asked a handful of questions on SO (going back to about 2011), and that's because I spend hours and hours trying to figure it out first. So yes, I think I do expect that of other questioners as well.
"Why won't my docker container build?" Well, because there's a typo in your instructions and it says so clearly in the error output. Of course we get tired of answering these types of questions.
Exactly, the answers like "been using library X for three years but finally gave up due to Y" is the kind of personal advice-style answers that usually are the most helpful.
It's a free text box, you can ask it anything you want, but yes; the answers to large scale questions have been quite lacking in my experience. But as a systems guy rather than a developer, those tend to be the actual problems that I have.
At my company, there is an list where problems that can't be handled by tech support or customer facing people get raised. Cases where the documentation is unclear or absent, things that can't be obviously classified as bugs, etc. Making a habit of answering those is a great way to learn about the system you're working on.
I'm just a student doing research, trying to use their code. I don't even want them to fix the code, I just wanted to ask the primary sources about how they implemented a few things. I don't have to ask them, I could go to someone else or a forum and ask the same thing. Maybe I'm naive, but it doesn't take a whole lot of effort to just respond back and tell me that they don't have time.
> I often ask "stupid" questions, but I do so after having searched the documentation, google and tried everything I could think of trying.
Then when you ask, demonstrate that you've done so.
"Hey, how do I do X? I read through the docs, googled, and tried everything I could think of but I'm still stuck" is likely to get you a decent answer.
If you're going to ask someone working for free to give you free support, the least you can do is demonstrate that you've done your homework. The unfortunate reality is that many users do not do this and just want someone else to hand-hold them through everything.
I agree that it'd be nicer if developers would remove "RTFM" from their lexicon, and, even if it provides no more information, go for something politer, like, "the answer is in the manual; please read it". But people get tired, people get frustrated, people have a bad day. And some people might do it deliberately to push away users who they think will be an unproductive time-suck for them. As someone benefiting from someone else's free labor, you are entitled to nothing. Suck it up and do your best to show that you're not a leech and that you'll do your part to support yourself, only asking for help when you've exhausted the usual avenues.
I can relate to this a lot. The amount of support requests we have to handle for our libraries originating from Windows users is staggering and the kind of question is sadly often close to something that was asked before (how to link, how to build) and no amount of documentation and installers seems to prevent it.
> Is there some reason programmers feel this need to bring up workarounds when I'm looking for an actual solution?
It is a solution! It's not the same solution you want, but it's an actual solution to the problem you described.
> Address the point the person you're responding to is making, and answer only the questions they are asking.
They are addressing the point, and " answer only the questions they are asking." is a dreadful idea to me. So often people are asking how to solve a problem in a specific way, but there's no good reason to be limiting themselves in that way. Given that they currently can't easily solve their problem in that specific way, it suggests that if there is a nice solution they are likely looking in the wrong place.
> Making assumptions just wastes people's time.
I feel like not sharing a solution because you think that the person you're trying to help has some unexpected extra
> is how I always read these types of responses in my head, and it's really frustrating because often-times I'm already aware of whatever workaround you've mentioned, have already tried it, and know it's not suitable. It's doubly frustrating when you're specifically looking for the solution that's not the workaround.
Then you should make it more explicit what you've already tried. We're not inside your head, and many people haven't tried these things before. This is a good guide: http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
I didn't realise lambda@edge was a thing, or that I could use it to solve these problems. If I'd asked the question, these would have helped me. Why should someone refrain from writing a concise and polite response helping me purely because they think I may have tried that before and it will annoy me?
> "You should be doing this you pleb!" is how I always read these types of responses in my head,
Then you may benefit from trying to work on this. Their reply has none of this snark or rudeness at all, and is simply listing some ways of solving the problem. You are the one that added this mentally, and then it annoys you. You are adding something yourself which then annoys you.
Go back and read what they said. They very simply explained that AWS let you do those things using lambda@edge. There was absolutely no reason to reply so rudely.
> just answering the same questions over, and over, and over.
Have you considered creating an FAQ?
> Something like 70% of every issue/email I've ever received could easily be auto replied with "please provide version, platform, code to reproduce, etc.."
Github has issue templates now. This could fix at least some of these incomplete submissions.
> That isn't to say there is only ever one way of performing an action or that it is impossible to make it clearer how to perform a task. And if you make it difficult for users to give you their opinion, it will be that much harder to know what needs to be improved.
Not to berate users, but sometimes when people run into an issue they want a solution yesterday. So they hop on to the mailinglist/irc and demand to have their problem fixed... Only for more informed people to point them at the FAQ which probably results for the first Google search on problem.
I'm not saying that the software could't have flaws. I'm saying that if people are armed with the answer to their issue, then they are more equipped to make suggestions at the future direction of the software. When they still don't have an answer they are still in, "FIX THIS NOW!" mode.
> So, if you want people to help, tell them what your problem is, and the context, not just ask for the specific things you think will solve your problem.
Absolutely!
It will also help if people can see what you already tried, e.g. code, links, screenshots, and photos.
Just for future reference, something like "Do we know exactly what the bug in VMWare is, and whether they're going to fix it?" would be way more effective at getting the answer you're looking for here. "Uh... but why?!?" sounds like cursing at the sky, and gets a response appropriate for that.
I had a professor who recommended that all students try to ask for help at least once on SO. 95% of students got their post deleted or got some snarky comments.
Honestly, it seems like this reflects the programming environment fairly well. Most devs will be more than happy to answer questions and help. However, if you have done nothing you cannot be helped.
I worked with a guy who gave up easily and was frustrated, but he refused TO READ. I would try to help him and would quickly realize our knowledge gap was so significant that I would need to provide reading materials for him, but he wouldn't read them.
I have been building applications as solo dev for years at a midsize company and I have never encountered anything that wasn't already answered on SO or on reddit/github.
I wish my computer gave me answers, instead of questions like “why is a core being hogged by the calendar syncing service” and “why am I getting a kernel panic every two hours” or “why do I even bother clicking ‘Always Allow’ on prompts for git to have access to my GitHub credentials when it never remembers my decision”.
The problem isn't that you're that person, it's that 90% of the responses are that person.
I find general forums to give answers that don't answer the question. I find product-specific forums provided by the vendor as a level of customer support, to be much better. I guess that's not always a thing for programming though.
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