News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Looking for a new CEO by umvi on Thursday March 28, 2019 @12:32PM (#19513801)
But if you answer such questions at face value, the asker still doesn't know how to write concise questions and will continue to post walls of code, since, after all, it worked and produced an answer for them.

It's almost like you need to pivot the question at that point to be "how do I isolate problems?" or "how do I debug?" because the asker lacks those basic skills needed to ask a good question.

Re:Looking for a new CEO by chefandy on Thursday March 28, 2019 @01:05PM (#19514177)
False dichotomy. It's not like you can only tell the poster one thing. There are questions on SO where someone says "this is how you fix your problem. This is how I figured that out. Here are some good docs/articles/etc. on this topic."

Both pointing out the problem with the code/methodology/etc. and helping them see something from a different perspective so they do better next time are valuable educational goals, and I don't understand why so many people think SO should address only one of them. It's almost as if people think coding problems are OK, but helping people with more amorphous skills is either beyond or beneath them.

Troubleshooting is a skill that can be taught— having someone more experienced giving you advice is an invaluable asset when you're trying to learn how to do it. Refusing to help people because they don't already know how to do it themselves helps nobody.