I HAD a question, honest!

Ye' old general discussion board. Basically, for everything that isn't covered elsewhere. Come here to shoot the breeze, shoot your mouth off, or whatever suits your fancy.
This forum is not for asking programming related questions.

Moderator: General Moderators

Post Reply
Twayne
Forum Newbie
Posts: 14
Joined: Fri Jun 20, 2008 11:47 am

I HAD a question, honest!

Post by Twayne »

I couldn't decide whether this was better in code or here; after reading feyd's minor tirade about wrongly located posts, guess I'll start here<G>!
:offtopic:
LOL, no, I won't, either! Instead I'll pose this little brain teaser?! Why is it, that when you spend a considerable amount of time putting together a clear, concise, carefully worded post asking for help, advice and comments, that the process of writing it up gives the originator the answer he needs!!! Either you guys are good or I'm stupid! I prefer to think you guys are good though.
:dubious:
This neophyte worked so hard putting that together, I'm going to send SOMETHING, even it it's just this little tirade! I just deleted my "greatest question ever" since now i Know the answer! Funny how that works ... where's my coffee?

You guys are REALLY good! Sorry 'bout wasting ether.

Thanks for being there, lol :^]

Twayne
User avatar
vargadanis
Forum Contributor
Posts: 158
Joined: Sun Jun 01, 2008 3:48 am
Contact:

Re: I HAD a question, honest!

Post by vargadanis »

Haha... :)
Most of the times the same things happens to me. By the time I ask, or shortly after, I know the answer. You just need to take the time to think it through. :)
User avatar
pickle
Briney Mod
Posts: 6445
Joined: Mon Jan 19, 2004 6:11 pm
Location: 53.01N x 112.48W
Contact:

Re: I HAD a question, honest!

Post by pickle »

I think that happens because you're forced to think the problem through step-by-step from the beginning. The same thing happens when I'm describing my problems to someone else - I'm forced to re-think about things my brain took for granted. The second pass through triggers something that solves the problem.

Glad you got it figured.
Real programmers don't comment their code. If it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand.
User avatar
Mordred
DevNet Resident
Posts: 1579
Joined: Sun Sep 03, 2006 5:19 am
Location: Sofia, Bulgaria

Re: I HAD a question, honest!

Post by Mordred »

I am a fairly experienced coder and I work with new(ish) technologies all the time, and while having to ask question about something, I sometimes find myself in this position as well. Two theories about it:
1. We're lazy and prefer other people to solve our problems.
On the other hand, this usually happens with problems that burn quite a lot of manpower while battling them, and then they burn some more in the process of composing emails, explaining your setup, what you were doing, what went wrong, what is never mentioned in the docs etc. :banghead: Not the appropriate behaviour for a lazy person if you ask me :)
So I lean in favour of the other explanation:
2. It happens because communicating with humans (while explaining the problem) is much easier and more natural than communicating with computers (while programming). The use of human language brings new angles to the problem. There's an excellent novel, Babel 17 that more or less deals with this, which is essentially the Sapir-Whorf hypotesis applied to programming languages' grammer and APIs compared to human languages.
User avatar
s.dot
Tranquility In Moderation
Posts: 5001
Joined: Sun Feb 06, 2005 7:18 pm
Location: Indiana

Re: I HAD a question, honest!

Post by s.dot »

I can't tell you how many times this has happened to me. :P Sometimes I make topics where only I post in them. 8O
Set Search Time - A google chrome extension. When you search only results from the past year (or set time period) are displayed. Helps tremendously when using new technologies to avoid outdated results.
User avatar
Eran
DevNet Master
Posts: 3549
Joined: Fri Jan 18, 2008 12:36 am
Location: Israel, ME

Re: I HAD a question, honest!

Post by Eran »

This is why they advocate pair-programming in agile methodologies. The process of explaining a problem to another person is half the distance to solving it.
dml
Forum Contributor
Posts: 133
Joined: Sat Jan 26, 2008 2:20 pm

Re: I HAD a question, honest!

Post by dml »

There's a thesis there for an anthropologist about this strange ritual among programmers where programmer 1 walks to programmer 2's desk, takes a breath, pauses, says "never mind", programmer 2 says "cardboard programmer?", programmer 1 says "yep", and walks away.

I think this is particularly useful for programmers, who who tend to be very sure of the soundness of their chains of reasoning, and are able to keep a sustained focus on some tiny detail of a system, where most people would get bored and distracted and try something else. A sane person who loses their keys wanders around the house keeping their eyes open. I try to isolate the bug, I'll think the keys can't possibly be in the kitchen, because I always put the keys on the hall table as soon as I walk in the door, therefore the keys must be there, and if I don't find them on or under the hall table the first time, I obviously haven't looked hard enough. If I have to explain the problem to someone else, I can't be so fixated on this tiny detail or they'll think I'm autistic, I have to prepare to tell a story (and storytelling is one of those ways of transmitting information from human to human as opposed to human to computer) about the last time I saw the keys: I opened the door, picked up the shopping, wait a sec... and then I see a speeded up film where I walk past the hall table because my hands are full with the shopping, and then I put the shopping down on the kitchen table, clunk, my keys go down beside the shopping, so right now they're in the exact place where I thought it was mathematically impossible they could be.
User avatar
Mordred
DevNet Resident
Posts: 1579
Joined: Sun Sep 03, 2006 5:19 am
Location: Sofia, Bulgaria

Re: I HAD a question, honest!

Post by Mordred »

dml wrote:There's a thesis there for an anthropologist about this strange ritual among programmers where programmer 1 walks to programmer 2's desk, takes a breath, pauses, says "never mind", programmer 2 says "cardboard programmer?", programmer 1 says "yep", and walks away.
Cool, someone else had the same theory as me :) Do you remember anything about the thesis - name, title, whatever? I'd like to find and read it
User avatar
JAB Creations
DevNet Resident
Posts: 2341
Joined: Thu Jan 13, 2005 6:44 pm
Location: Sarasota Florida
Contact:

Re: I HAD a question, honest!

Post by JAB Creations »

If you stick around the forums long enough you'll notice that I often can't seem to find the answer until after I've posted the thread regardless of how many times I previewed it before posting.
dml
Forum Contributor
Posts: 133
Joined: Sat Jan 26, 2008 2:20 pm

Re: I HAD a question, honest!

Post by dml »

Mordred wrote:
dml wrote:There's a thesis there for an anthropologist...
Cool, someone else had the same theory as me :) Do you remember anything about the thesis - name, title, whatever? I'd like to find and read it
:) Sorry Mordred, I was speculating that somebody could get a PhD by studying the phenomenon, I don't know if anyone actually has. I'd like to read that paper too, if it exists.
User avatar
califdon
Jack of Zircons
Posts: 4484
Joined: Thu Nov 09, 2006 8:30 pm
Location: California, USA

Re: I HAD a question, honest!

Post by califdon »

pickle wrote:I think that happens because you're forced to think the problem through step-by-step from the beginning. The same thing happens when I'm describing my problems to someone else - I'm forced to re-think about things my brain took for granted. The second pass through triggers something that solves the problem.
I think that's absolutely valid, and it also works that way for teachers. When you have to prepare a lesson plan, you discover many "connections" that you wouldn't have recognized without going through the careful sequential process of writing it down.
Post Reply