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Part of your question addresses the DRY precept. The development of a good answer represents an investment of time, and it would be a good return on that investment from the community perspective if the answer could be shared among many questioners who have related questions, without much added investment on your part.

The DRY precept surfaces in different ways at different levels of abstraction. At the level of data definition and database building, DRY surfaces as data normalization. At the level of OOP and data sharing among objects, DRY surfaces as classes that extend other classes. And so on.

The problem that is vexing you is, in part, a problem with the SO community and the SO infrastructure as it relates to DRY at the level of sharing skills and knowledge. For every class of questions, there is a "canonical answer" that would serve to answer not only the question at hand, but also future questions in the same class. In the best of all possible worlds, some of those future questions never have to be asked, because the would be questioner is guided to an existing question, and is able to get the needed answer from one of the responses.

Some questioners have the insight to be able to read a specific answer to a specific question, and (sort of) infer the canonical answer from the specific answer, and then apply the canonical answer to their own question. Other users have to be led by the hand to specific answer to their specific question. Most of us have this ability to a greater degree in some areas of computing, and to a lesser degree in other areas.

"Please give me th codez" is perhaps the ultimate in asking to be led by the hand. The other extreme is a formal course of learning, where the concepts are featured prominently, and are of very wide applicability. The examples are meant to flesh out the concepts, and to give the learner some practice at applying these concepts to specific cases. Homework problems provide further exercise at applying the recently learned concepts.

The amount of investment in developing a good formal course of learning is immense, and dwarfs the investment in coming up with a good answer in SO. The amount of investment in taking a good formal course of learning is also very large, and dwarfs the investment in asking a good question in SO, and getting some good answers quickly.

A good formal course of learning also uses the DRY precept, but at a different level of abstraction altogether.

Part of your question addresses the DRY precept. The development of a good answer represents an investment of time, and it would be a good return on that investment from the community perspective if the answer could be shared among many questioners who have related questions, without much added investment on your part.

The DRY precept surfaces in different ways at different levels of abstraction. At the level of data definition and database building, DRY surfaces as data normalization. At the level of OOP and data sharing among objects, DRY surfaces as classes that extend other classes. And so on.

The problem that is vexing you is, in part, a problem with the SO community and the SO infrastructure as it relates to DRY at the level of sharing skills and knowledge. For every class of questions, there is a "canonical answer" that would serve to answer not only the question at hand, but also future questions in the same class. In the best of all possible worlds, some of those future questions never have to be asked, because the would be questioner is guided to an existing question, and is able to get the needed answer from one of the responses.

Some questioners have the insight to be able to read a specific answer to a specific question, and (sort of) infer the canonical answer from the specific answer, and then apply the canonical answer to their own question. Other users have to be led by the hand to specific answer to their specific question. Most of us have this ability to a greater degree in some areas of computing, and to a lesser degree in other areas.

"Please give me th codez" is perhaps the ultimate in asking to be led by the hand. The other extreme is a formal course of learning, where the concepts are featured prominently, and are of very wide applicability. The examples are meant to flesh out the concepts, and to give the learner some practice at applying these concepts to specific cases. Homework problems provide further exercise at applying the recently learned concepts.

The amount of investment in developing a good formal course of learning is immense, and dwarfs the investment in coming up with a good answer in SO. The amount of investment in taking a good formal course of learning is also very large, and dwarfs the investment in asking a good question in SO, and getting some good answers quickly.

A good formal course of learning also uses the DRY precept, but at a different level of abstraction altogether.

Vaguely connected to the DRY concept is the idea of creating a compendium of human knowledge that can be easily searched for the answer to any given question. People have been trying to do this since the dawn of civilization. Before I found SO, I had found Wikipedia and Google. Before that, the world wide web, and before that, the internet. (I don't know what order things actually got developed in). And if you go way, way back, there was the library at Alexandria, before it got burninated.

Sometimes, the answer I've given that has been most valuable to the OP is not the answer itself, but the right search terms to use with Google. In those cases, the right search terms gave the OP a wealth of material on the web from which that person could pick and choose.

The right answer to this question seems to be: pick a strategy that works for you. My strategy works for me, even though it only gets me less than 10K rep points in 5 years. I deserve some upvotes that I do not get, but I also get some upvotes that I do not deserve. It balances out.

Part of your question addresses the DRY precept. The development of a good answer represents an investment of time, and it would be a good return on that investment if the answer could be shared among many questioners who have related questions, without much added investment on your part. I'm talking "return on investment" in the sense of knowledge sharing here, not rep gaming or self promotion. Not to disparage either of those two, but I'm only discussing one aspect of goodness.

The DRY precept surfaces in different ways at different levels of abstraction. At the level of data definition and database building, DRY surfaces as data normalization. At the level of OOP and data sharing among objects, DRY surfaces as classes that extend other classes. And so on.

The problem that is vexing you is, in part, a problem with the SO community and the SO infrastructure as it relates to DRY at the level of sharing skills and knowledge. For every class of questions, there is a "canonical answer" that would serve to answer not only the question at hand, but also future questions in the same class. In the best of all possible worlds, some of those future questions never have to be asked, because the would be questioner is guided to an existing question, and is able to get the needed answer from one of the responses.

Some questioners have the insight to be able to read a specific answer to a specific question, and (sort of) infer the canonical answer from the specific answer, and then apply the canonical answer to their own question. Other users have to be led by the hand to specific answer to their specific question. Most of us have this ability to a greater degree in some areas of computing, and to a lesser degree in other areas.

"Please give me th codez" is perhaps the ultimate in asking to be led by the hand. The other extreme is a formal course of learning, where the concepts are featured prominently, and are of very wide applicability. The examples are meant to flesh out the concepts, and to give the learner some practice at applying these concepts to specific cases. Homework problems provide further exercise at applying the recently learned concepts.

The amount of investment in developing a good formal course of learning is immense, and dwarfs the investment in coming up with a good answer in SO. The amount of investment in taking a good formal course of learning is also very large, and dwarfs the investment in asking a good question in SO, and getting some good answers quickly.

A good formal course of learning also uses the DRY precept, but at a different level of abstraction altogether.

Part of your question addresses the DRY precept. The development of a good answer represents an investment of time, and it would be a good return on that investment from the community perspective if the answer could be shared among many questioners who have related questions, without much added investment on your part.

The DRY precept surfaces in different ways at different levels of abstraction. At the level of data definition and database building, DRY surfaces as data normalization. At the level of OOP and data sharing among objects, DRY surfaces as classes that extend other classes. And so on.

The problem that is vexing you is, in part, a problem with the SO community and the SO infrastructure as it relates to DRY at the level of sharing skills and knowledge. For every class of questions, there is a "canonical answer" that would serve to answer not only the question at hand, but also future questions in the same class. In the best of all possible worlds, some of those future questions never have to be asked, because the would be questioner is guided to an existing question, and is able to get the needed answer from one of the responses.

Some questioners have the insight to be able to read a specific answer to a specific question, and (sort of) infer the canonical answer from the specific answer, and then apply the canonical answer to their own question. Other users have to be led by the hand to specific answer to their specific question. Most of us have this ability to a greater degree in some areas of computing, and to a lesser degree in other areas.

"Please give me th codez" is perhaps the ultimate in asking to be led by the hand. The other extreme is a formal course of learning, where the concepts are featured prominently, and are of very wide applicability. The examples are meant to flesh out the concepts, and to give the learner some practice at applying these concepts to specific cases. Homework problems provide further exercise at applying the recently learned concepts.

The amount of investment in developing a good formal course of learning is immense, and dwarfs the investment in coming up with a good answer in SO. The amount of investment in taking a good formal course of learning is also very large, and dwarfs the investment in asking a good question in SO, and getting some good answers quickly.

A good formal course of learning also uses the DRY precept, but at a different level of abstraction altogether.

Part of your question addresses the DRY precept. The development of a good answer represents an investment of time, and it would be a good return on that investment if the answer could be shared among many questioners who have related questions, without much added investment on your part. I'm talking "return on investment" in the sense of knowledge sharing here, not rep gaming or self promotion. Not to disparage either of those two, but I'm only discussing one aspect of goodness.

The DRY precept surfaces in different ways at different levels of abstracton. At the level of data definition and database building, DRY surfaces as data normalization. At the level of OOP and data sharing among objects, DRY surfaces as classes that extend other classes. And so on.

The problem that is vexing you is, in part, a problem with the SO community and the SO infrastructure as it relates to DRY at the level of sharing skills and knowledge. For every class of questions, there is a "canonical answer" that would serve to answer not only the question at hand, but also future questions in the same class. In the best of all possible worlds, some of those future questions never have to be asked, because the would be questioner is guided to an existing question, and is able to get the needed answer from one of the responses.

Some questioners have the insight to be able to read a specific answer to a specific question, and (sort of) infer the canonical answer from the specific answer, and then apply the canonical answer to their own question. Other users have to be led by the hand to specific answer to their specific question. Most of us have this ability to a greater degree in some areas of computing, and to a lesser degree in other areas.

"Please give me th codez" is perhaps the ultimate in asking to be led by the hand. The other extreme is a formal course of learning, where the concepts are featured prominently, and are of very wide applicability. The examples are meant to flesh out the concepts, and to give the learner some practice at applying these concepts to specific cases. Homework problems provide further exercise at applying the recently learned concepts.

The amount of investment in developing a good formal course of learning is immense, and dwarfs the investment in coming up with a good answer in SO. The amount of investment in taking a good formal course of learning is also very large, and dwarfs the investment in asking a good question in SO, and getting some good answers quickly.

A good formal course of learning also uses the DRY precept, but at a different level of abstraction altogether.

Part of your question addresses the DRY precept. The development of a good answer represents an investment of time, and it would be a good return on that investment if the answer could be shared among many questioners who have related questions, without much added investment on your part. I'm talking "return on investment" in the sense of knowledge sharing here, not rep gaming or self promotion. Not to disparage either of those two, but I'm only discussing one aspect of goodness.

The DRY precept surfaces in different ways at different levels of abstraction. At the level of data definition and database building, DRY surfaces as data normalization. At the level of OOP and data sharing among objects, DRY surfaces as classes that extend other classes. And so on.

The problem that is vexing you is, in part, a problem with the SO community and the SO infrastructure as it relates to DRY at the level of sharing skills and knowledge. For every class of questions, there is a "canonical answer" that would serve to answer not only the question at hand, but also future questions in the same class. In the best of all possible worlds, some of those future questions never have to be asked, because the would be questioner is guided to an existing question, and is able to get the needed answer from one of the responses.

Some questioners have the insight to be able to read a specific answer to a specific question, and (sort of) infer the canonical answer from the specific answer, and then apply the canonical answer to their own question. Other users have to be led by the hand to specific answer to their specific question. Most of us have this ability to a greater degree in some areas of computing, and to a lesser degree in other areas.

"Please give me th codez" is perhaps the ultimate in asking to be led by the hand. The other extreme is a formal course of learning, where the concepts are featured prominently, and are of very wide applicability. The examples are meant to flesh out the concepts, and to give the learner some practice at applying these concepts to specific cases. Homework problems provide further exercise at applying the recently learned concepts.

The amount of investment in developing a good formal course of learning is immense, and dwarfs the investment in coming up with a good answer in SO. The amount of investment in taking a good formal course of learning is also very large, and dwarfs the investment in asking a good question in SO, and getting some good answers quickly.

A good formal course of learning also uses the DRY precept, but at a different level of abstraction altogether.