By the way, I wonder if someone could give me the C++ code for automagically clean this kind of article from my google searches. Send it to my email as soon as possible >D

Oh, and make me a coffee, I feel sleepy…

However it is clear you know nothing of the person who you are criticising so it signifies less than the barking of hungry dog.

And this should even apply to people who have repeatedly shown that they abuse the privilege?

I don’t think you believe that even though that’s how your posting reads.

The article is simply suggesting that someone like your good self who has put in some hard yards say that up front in making your request.

Stop asking others to assume you are a good person who is doing things the right way. Instead of that remember you are asking for the kindness of strangers and put the evidence of your bona fides on the table for all to see. Not only does that immediately remove you from the group being spoken of in this article it also serves as a good example to others about how to ask a question.

Read the article again.

And if you think “learning by example” does not include presenting one’s own efforts to be critiqued then you simply don’t understand what the phrase means.

I spend hours looking up a subject in google and where ever else I can find. I try looking up in documentation, I try different things in my code (sometimes, I want to be honest here, sometimes I’m just sick of working with my non-working code). Finally I go into chat and ask. The first reply I usually get is a flippant “google it” or “rtfm” or some such. I almost always google it first.

Another situation, I need to figure out how to do something, I’ve tried a lot of different things and looked up stuff that didn’t turn up anything (this happens a lot of the time, googling but not finding anything because you somehow don’t have the right combination of magic words that will summon your solution out of thin air, remember old text adventures, where you had to put in the exact word or it didn’t know what you were talking about?) So I go into chat like the above and ask my question, and show my code. This time it’s like “Why are you doing it that way, why aren’t you using lists? Why not use this library or api, etc, etc… All I wanted was a little answer to my question, you don’t even have to give me code, all you have to do is link me somewhere that explains it.

Or how about this I’m trying to figure out how to do something, i’ve done the prescribed searching. So I’m discussing in a chatroom about different ways to do something, and guess what someone is actually trying to be nice and trying to help. They tell me one thing, I ask them another, they try to explain it again, i ask them about a certain aspect. Little do they realize that I’m just not getting it. They assume I already know stuff or whatever. Sometimes people are just slow, like me. I’m slow, it takes me forever to do something. And guess what sometimes I can’t remember something I did 6 months ago even when looking at code, even when commenting.

And why do you assume I want to learn something specific? Maybe I just want a quick code snippet because it should be simpler than the awful mess I’ve made for myself. Maybe you can do in a few minutes what it takes me hours to even being to start on?

You want me to respect you by going through all the effort of trying to figure it out on my own, and generally wanting help, then you need to respect me in the fact that I’ve actually done that, and not assume because I asked a silly question I wasn’t industrious enough for your tastes. He didn’t jump through the ring of fire, so he doesn’t get help on learning to ride…

The best thing you can do if you don’t want to help is just not answer me, don’t go through the trouble of insulting me because I wasn’t up to your standards. If someone asks you for code just delete. If he pesters you tell him you don’t give out code, and not to mail you. If he still pesters you put him on your spam list and don’t even look at the email.

Sorry if I’m the a-hole on this thread, it’s stressful enough to try to keep up with all the trends and all the proper ways to do something, without someone being snooty and not telling you that there’s a reason for a specific way of doing something that you’re not doing.

Total time, about 2 ½ hours. And I was able to brag to my classmates about the great shortcut I had taken on the assignment, and it WAS a big timesaver.

Do any of the steps above seem familiar to you? How many of you even know what a card catalog is?