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Comment by melling | Hacker News Reader

The answer was 15 lines of very educational code that would have benefited anyone learning elisp.

To put it bluntly, it would have been much more educational for you if you had actually tried to code it yourself. If you during this had encountered a concrete problem or question which you couldn't solve on your own, you could have posted it on SO.

But it's perfectly acceptable to ask how to split a string in C#? That's not covered many other places? It's a duplicate, yet highly up voted question.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8928601/how-can-i-split-a...

There's probably 100x more C# information than elisp on the internet.

It is highly upvoted because many people have found it useful. Contrary to your question, it's a question with many uses.

>That's not covered many other places? (...) >There's probably 100x more C# information than elisp on the internet.

So what?

Melling's question can't win: closed for being too broad; attacked for being too narrow.

I see this attitude a lot and frankly it is quite annoying. If the guy wanted a lecture he would have asked for a lecture. He wants to learn how to do something without spending 100 hours in it. I know that feeling, lots of us have been there. You are not his mama to lecture him.

I'm just saying SO is not a site designed for this purpose, so he shouldn't get offended when his request for code is downvoted.

http://stackoverflow.com/posts/1003841/revisions?page=2

Look who asked this question. "Not designed for this purpose," indeed. Joel and Jeff weren't sitting around trying to think of reasons for people NOT to use their site.

That is not a "plz write code for me" question though, it is just a very simple question. If it is too simple is discussed here: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/02/are-some-questions-too...

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