monkdiscuss apl There was a post earlier today commenting on the dearth of documentation of how to use STDIN, as a simple program didn't do what he expected it to. (He tested for string equivalence with a single equal-sign, rather than what the inner C++ programmer wants (<b>==</b>) or what Perl wanted (<b>eq</b>).) <p> Several thoughtful people explained his error and how to correct it, or directed him to a CPAN package to better manage his I/O. <p> My question is: Are we helping people like this by providing the answer, or should we attempt to teach them to think like a programmer by asking a series of questions, leading the original questioner to find the solution on his own? <p> This is a concern for a very limited subset of posts. Questions about the fine points of a package, or how something could be designed better, etc. don't fall into the area I'm commenting on. <p> It just seems that there are people trying to program who don't try to be analytical when they encounter a problem. They don't write toy programs to address the question, they don't use the debugger or print statements, they don't Google or Super-search. They just say "Help!". <p> Are we doing them more harm than good by giving them the answers they ask for? <p> (I've been married to a High School teacher for 32 years; does it show? 8-) )