2

Possible Duplicate:
There are no stupid questions - or are there?

Short question: Is it okay to ask stupid question on Stack Overflow?

Long question: From time to time, people ask questions on SO that they should not have to ask there. We all make mistakes, but some questions already include their answers. And the question vaporizes itself while being writing — often. That's what I like to call a stupid question.

At the moment that I ask a question, the answer may jump into my face, and then everything is clear. For example:

If I write "xyz\n" on the command line, why does the next line start on a new line, not at the end of my line?

A big sorry to the original poster, but here is an example (again, sorry for quoting you).

In my very personal opinion, it is much more productive to tell those people to think twice and check the conditions that lead to the given errors, instead of just posting (and/or copy/pasting) an error message.

The people asking those questions will never become real programmers if they learn to just ask questions on SO! And SO will fade away in information overload, like all other sites.

On a personal side-node: I was really happy about SO, because it is so much better than any Q&A sites or forums on the WWW. It has (had?) so much more quality.

6
  • 1
    check FAQ to know about the kind of questions you can ask here!
    – Gopi
    Dec 22, 2009 at 6:02
  • questions about stackoverflow are for meta.stackoverflow.com hehe, but 'dumb' programming questions here are fine. This question might get moved. this is nice site. just be nice and people will be nice to you. Dec 22, 2009 at 6:02
  • dupe: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/18198/…
    – Troggy
    Dec 22, 2009 at 6:31
  • The OP has just ask this "dumb" question to earn reputation, as he admitted: stackoverflow.com/questions/1944575/systemrm-rf-closed Dec 22, 2009 at 7:14
  • No, its not about experts vs. newbies (well, my answer WAS offensive). When someone answers a question in a polite way, and tells the questioner to think about what could could have lead to the error output it sees, then why should the one who answered grab a down-vote? Why?? In this very special case, I was not polite (and I told so), and I usually grab an up-vote for being polite! You only get an up-vote for an answer that is complete and polite and answers all the cases that a reader could think of - but the questioner will never be delightened! He stay as stupid as its question was!
    – frunsi
    Dec 22, 2009 at 8:07
  • 2
    I even excused for not being polite. But this was ignored!? So I get the feeling that SO is all abount plain stupid attention whoring... In just a different way (being polite=attention=whoring)
    – frunsi
    Dec 22, 2009 at 8:09

2 Answers 2

2

Who knows how long someone has been struggling with a "stupid" question before posting it.

I've spent many an hour debugging something that turned out to be dumb (C++'s switch statement's defaulting to fall-through, I'm looking at you). Does that make me stupid? Perhaps. In times like that, it's generally incredibly helpful to have a second (and in the case of questions asked on stackoverflow, generally a third, fourth, fifth, fiftieth) pair of eyes looking at the problem.

The fact that something is obvious to you, who have not spent 3 hours looking at the same thing over and over again, does not make it universally "stupid".

1
  • 1
    No, its not about experts vs. newbies (well, my answer WAS offensive). When someone answers a question in a polite way, and tells the questioner to think about what could could have lead to the error output it sees, then why should the one who answered grab a down-vote? Why?? In this very special case, I was not polite (and I told so), and I usually grab an up-vote for being polite! You only get an up-vote for an answer that is complete and polite and answers all the cases that a reader could think of - but the questioner will never be delightened! He stay as stupid as its question was!
    – frunsi
    Dec 22, 2009 at 8:06
2

Sometimes experts in some language might ask really trivial questions in other. So is it dumb?

Other times real newbies and college students ask simple questions which is totally rational. Is it dumb here?

Stackoverflow is meant for all programmers, its not written anywhere that its for Experts or seniors only

1
  • No, its not about experts vs. newbies (well, my question IS offensife). When someone answers a question in a polite way, and tells the questioner to think about what could could have lead to the error output it sees, then why should the one who answered grab a down-vote? Why?? In this very special case, I was not polite (and I told so), and I usually grab an up-vote for being polite! You only get an up-vote for an answer that is complete and polite and answers all the cases that a reader could think of - but the questioner will never be delightened! He stay as stupid as its question was!
    – frunsi
    Dec 22, 2009 at 8:05

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .