EarthBound

Lots of Reading Material October 28th, 2004 Joel from Joel On Software is assembling a book about software development by asking people to send in links to articles they think people should read. I'm slowly working my way through the ones that sound interesting.

This one sounded interesting. How To Ask Questions The Smart Way. It's about how to ask a techie a question. Examples:

   hackers have a reputation for meeting simple questions with what looks like hostility or arrogance. It sometimes looks like we're reflexively rude to newbies and the ignorant. But this isn't really true.

   What we are, unapologetically, is hostile to people who seem to be unwilling to think or to do their own homework before asking questions. People like that are time sinks — they take without giving back, they waste time we could have spent on another question more interesting and another person more worthy of an answer. We call people like this “losers