Hacker News Reader

Comment by andi999 | Hacker News Reader

I still think there are also questions which are best answered straight, like 'how many bytes does a float have? Do arrays start with 0 or 1 in this language? Is printf of %s with null argument, undefined behaviour, implementation defined or actually standard conforming'.

View on HN

You've been down-voted, but you're absolutely correct in some situations.

Sure, answering those questions with "this is a great opportunity to learn how to read the documentation" is the "right" response.

But I think we've all experienced the frustration of trying to write something in a language we don't use every day, and 'wasting' our time looking up simple things ("okay, what's the exact syntax of a for-loop in this language again?") that just adds friction when we're trying to solve a problem. There's a reason programmers complain so much about being interrupted.

Part of being a good teacher is being able to make those points of friction disappear and enable your students to "get it" and experience the joy of solving a problem.

Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. How many kids would play football/soccer if you were only allowed to play a match with regulation numbers of players on each side, and stopping play every time someone didn't have 'perfect' form?

I suspect they were downvoted because the initial commenter didn't say they only answered questions with questions or that they never provided more traditional instruction. GP is arguing against something that wasn't even said.

Those kind of questions are a great opportunity to show a student where to find documentation and how to read it, because that is a daily journey that will never end.

Finding the answer in the docs is itself a skill, so even these simple questions might best be not answered directly.

so, just touch the keyboard and display how do you resolve this problem?

"How many bytes does a float have?" is a bad question to ask. Languages may implement floats differently. If someone asks "how many bytes does an ieee 754 double-precision floating-point have?" then sure, answer 8 bytes. But "how many bytes does a float have?" is precisely a question that should be further defined.

I thought there are no bad questions.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com