Hacker News Reader

Comment by mechanical_fish | Hacker News Reader

He does not give the answer.

Welcome to graduate school! (And, for that matter, real life.)

As in grad school, the secret is: If you can't figure it out, ask around. Form teams that stay up until 3am waving their hands and sketching on chalkboards. If nothing else, it's a bonding experience that you'll treasure for life.

View on HN

I get your message, but the problem is this is not grad school. This is a book; one way communication. I have no one to ask, as I am the only one I know who has an interest in coding.

Of course I can always ask on the web, but having to break off from coding, pose a question, and then wait for it to get answered before I can continue really breaks up my learning curve.

You could ask on #python on the freenode irc network.

>Of course I can always ask on the web, but having to break off from coding, pose a question, and then wait for it to get answered before I can continue really breaks up my learning curve.

You're skipping a vital step. Searching for the answer on the web. Most of the time the question you want to ask has already been answered.

Very true! Most things can be solved that way. But sometimes your issues are not googleable. I remember back when I was just learning javascript, it would never in my wildest dreams occur to me that there were host objects and that you couldn't write over them, since I'd only used compiled languages before... it took 5 seconds for my friend to start laughing when he looked at my code because I had named a variable "top."

Asking clear questions will help you learn. You can ask on Stack Overflow (or #python) - make sure to credit the source of your question[0] and at what point you are stuck. Often by trying to explain the precise thing that you don't understand, you will have a moment of zen.

[0] People will be a lot more helpful if they know you are trying to learn, rather than posting a "send me teh codes plz" request. Also they will hopefully give you just enough of a hint and not spoil the whole thing for you.

Often by trying to explain the precise thing that you don't understand, you will have a moment of zen.

This.

I often find that I run into a problem, try to solve it on my own, then bring someone unfamiliar in to get a fresh set of eyes on it. It usually goes like this

Me: "Hey, I honestly can't figure out why this is doing this particular thing, can you take a look? <start explaining problem here in detail> ...FUCK! Nevermind, I know exactly whats going on. Thanks for your help"

Person I asked: "Huh?Uh sure? I can solve problems with my presence alone"

I cannot tell you how many time I have have posted a question to USENET, hit send, and then had an AHA! moment.

One of my professors in college would bring a small teddy-bear to the lab. Whenever one student wanted to ask a question, he would just put the teddy bear on top of the monitor, and you'd have to talk to the teddy bear first.

It seemed ridiculous, but it worked wonders. Most of the time said professor didn't have to open his mouth. It was just a matter of organizing your thoughts in a coherent way.

One of my favorite troubleshooting techniques at the office is to have someone SHOW me the problem. Often, in just trying to show me how they're gettingn whatever error they're complaining about, they realize they're doing it wrong in the first place.

Then I get to stamp something 'solved' on my task list, and everybody's happy.

In the book "The Pragmatic Programmer" they refer to this as "rubber ducking". The origin of the term was from a particular programmer who kept a rubber duck sitting near his computer (I believe on his monitor, I don't have the book handy right now). When questioned about why the duck was there, he said that when he got stuck on a problem, he would explain the problem to the rubber duck (full well knowing that the duck was not going to respond :-D ). The purpose of having the duck was just to have a target to explain the problem to, knowing that the act of explaining the problem would often lead him to the solution.

There's a wiki article about it here:

http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?RubberDucking

> Of course I can always ask on the web, but having to break off from coding, pose a question, and then wait for it

I've been programming professionally for almost 20 years. What you described right there is the fundamental skill/activity I have performed. Whether waiting for a spec, or decision if this feature is going in, or most commonly like your self looking for answer to some problem I don't get.

Good programmers either know everything (ha) or know how to learn/find the answer quickly. It's a great skill to start honing now.

God I miss those times, I seriously need to get into that kind of group again.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com