One of the most important concepts to understand about making posts to forums and
newsgroups is that of "Short but Complete". There are many posts, and
only so many readers who may be willing to answer a post.
The key to getting
your post answered (and answered well) is to provide SUFFICIENT INFORMATION in
your post for readers to be able to quickly understand the problem. This means
a short but detailed and very specific description of the question or problem.
Broad, general questions like "how can I hook up events in VB.NET, please
provide me with the code" are most likely going to be IGNORED. However if
you provide a specific code example or a complete descrption of the actual situation
in which you need to be able to "hook up" an event, you are much more
likely to get a response. So, when posting the choice is yours. Remember - GIGO
- Garbage In, Garbage Out!
Recently I corresponded with
Jon Skeet, a remarkable independent thinker and .NET devotee from Reading, UK
who has a marvelous article here on eggheadcafe.com about EBCDIC conversions.
Jon has a short article about the art of posting questions on forums
and newsgroups that revolves around the concept of posting "Just Enough"
(he calls it "short but complete") program code so that readers can
help you solve your problem. Here is a link to Jon's excellent article, and I
encourage our readers to think deeply about the "art of posting" after
reading it.
http://www.yoda.arachsys.com/csharp/complete.html
You
also might want to take the time to read "how to ask questions the smart
way":
http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
And
Jon also now has his "almost feature-complete" FAQ for the MS C# newsgroup:
http://www.yoda.arachsys.com/csharp/faq/
As
a rookie developer, I was fortunate to be surrounded by experts much smarter
than myself. I was able to visit friends at their homes to learn programming
concepts, and as a result, I was able to accomplish a lot even though I am almost
100% "self taught". There were many nights that I stayed up till 3AM
because of my dogged determination to find a solution to a problem, and my "never
give up" atttitude.
Now that I am a Microsoft MVP, you can
read some of my posts answering readers' questions on the MS C# newsgroup; my
way of taking a small amount of my available time to "give back" to
the programming community that has helped me (and continues to do so) to grow
as a professional developer. Of course, I remain active here at eggheadcafe.com
posting articles, tips, hotlinks, and answering posts.
Cheers!
Submission Date: 9/23/2005 3:19:27 PM
Submitted
By: Peter Bromberg
My Home Page: http://www.eggheadcafe.com