[serious] What you think are the ways to help people?

[Merri]

A half-continuation from this topic: http://www.vbforums.com/showthread.php?t=317691


That situatation just arised this thing to my mind and for some reason I even wanted to start a new topic about this. So here I am, starting off a topic.

Generally, when I start helping someone, I try to figure out his level of experience. That determines what I can start pushing to him so he can actually understand what I'm going to say.

- beginner: if there is some basic stuff he needs to know before he can get to what he actually in total wants to get, I start telling about the basic stuff
- advanced: I guide more directly to the question, assuming he knows the basics required to do what he must do
- expert: if possible, I tell exactly what he wants, because I can know he already masters the other stuff

That's a lot categorising, but I don't know how I could otherwise try to make a picture of it for you. There are always exceptions of exceptions when I behave differently, it really depends on what is the actual subject and the problem.

One of the most important things for me to is make sure whomever I am helping actually learns something. So, I might give help, but I might leave something to be figured out. This way I hope to make him think and find possible errors all by himself. To what I know, people learn best from their errors and also when they get embarrassed. People want to avoid that, thus they learn well to not get into that situatation again.

It maybe sounds more rude than what I want it to sound like, but that's just what I think is a good way to teach. And now that I used that word, maybe I am of a teacher nature, even though in real life I'm not that good of a teacher (yeah, I once had a course where I had to be a teacher... it was pretty much a disaster - but I survived).


So, any other thoughts? Is there something wrong with my way of helping or do you have a (completely) different point of view to this?

[visualAd]

Like you said we are here to help people and by definition it means guide them to the solution. Just telling someone the answer straight off isn't helping them, at the end of the day they pay people a lot of money to do things like that.

I often try and point people towards what they need and not just give them their code. Sometimes I will rewrite appalling code and put comments in where I've made positive changes.

With regards to that thread, it looks like the poster needs an introduction to looping, code indentation and arrays, I don't see the problem with someone else suggesting an alternative as long as he explains and gives working code examples to demonstrate its merits.

Ultimatley it is up to the person who posted the question to choose the appropriate solution. Given several possible solutions and a choice between them, the poster would investiagte the pro's and con's of each and in the end have a better understanding of the problem at hand and how to solve it in a logical an lateral manner.

[dglienna]

Sometimes it is best to look at the big picture. He was doing a poker game, and using combo boxes (10) for 5 cards. If he would have gotten things to work the way that he originally set it up, it would just be a matter of time before he wanted to use a real deck of cards. He would have to re-write all of his code to get random cards, and putting that into a combo would be senseless. I suggested a more practical method, which still would have required a re-write, yet, at the same time, allowed his project to be upgradeable. I hope he was better at C than he was at VB, but have no idea.
I just add what I think the user wants, but often interject with my own method of doing what he wants in a different way.

Also, some times, I am completely off the mark.

I learn from everything that I read. I don't claim to have the right way to do every situation, but offer advice if it is something that I have already done. And a Draw Poker game is something that I have done before.

[mendhak]

So... parole officers aren't the real reason we're here?

[visualAd]

Where have you been you silly frog. Hurry up an get your website back up, i'm dieing a slow and painful death here.

[mendhak]

It's like that website episode from the Twilight zone... where the dude goes on vacation and his website pretends to go down. And then he loses his eyes!!!

[Maven]

A half-continuation from this topic: http://www.vbforums.com/showthread.php?t=317691


That situatation just arised this thing to my mind and for some reason I even wanted to start a new topic about this. So here I am, starting off a topic.

Generally, when I start helping someone, I try to figure out his level of experience. That determines what I can start pushing to him so he can actually understand what I'm going to say.

- beginner: if there is some basic stuff he needs to know before he can get to what he actually in total wants to get, I start telling about the basic stuff
- advanced: I guide more directly to the question, assuming he knows the basics required to do what he must do
- expert: if possible, I tell exactly what he wants, because I can know he already masters the other stuff

That's a lot categorising, but I don't know how I could otherwise try to make a picture of it for you. There are always exceptions of exceptions when I behave differently, it really depends on what is the actual subject and the problem.

One of the most important things for me to is make sure whomever I am helping actually learns something. So, I might give help, but I might leave something to be figured out. This way I hope to make him think and find possible errors all by himself. To what I know, people learn best from their errors and also when they get embarrassed. People want to avoid that, thus they learn well to not get into that situatation again.

It maybe sounds more rude than what I want it to sound like, but that's just what I think is a good way to teach. And now that I used that word, maybe I am of a teacher nature, even though in real life I'm not that good of a teacher (yeah, I once had a course where I had to be a teacher... it was pretty much a disaster - but I survived).


So, any other thoughts? Is there something wrong with my way of helping or do you have a (completely) different point of view to this?

As long as someone isn't asking me to do all the work for them then I don't care to pitch a hand. But if it's someone asking for someone to do their homework, asking how to take advantage of buffer overflows (code injection) or crack security of any kind, I won't help at all.

When I do help someone though, I'll try to answer thier question with accuracy. If I know of pitfalls one should watch out for I'll mention it.

[wossname]

Why help people out at all? **** 'em.

Let 'em hang.