One of my favorites is finding such a post, getting hopeful to find an answer, and then realizing it was me who wrote the post years and years ago.
I once was helping a coworker with a problem and asked about it on a related forum. Later that week he came over and told me how he found a forum where someone else who had the same problem, and their username looked a lot like my name…
In our internal Q&A system I make it a point to describe what the resolution was, even when the mistake is something obvious or embarrassing that I did. I like to think my legacy will be leaving several dozen self-answered questions on common problems that other developers didn't feel the need to type up.
I always find it funny when an early reporter decides to include irrelevant information in their post, which then causes every single reply to do the same thing. i.e.
I get a segfault when I run the tool. OS: Debian. RAM: 8G. RGB lights: 4. Breakfast: French toast.
...
I have the same problem. Breakfast: bacon and eggs.
I have run into similar problems with unattended sign-in logs.
So you arrive somewhere like a reception desk, a church, a funeral, and there's a sign-in log with, say, five columns labeled at the top, and a long list of people who've already logged in there.
So I politely try not to scrutinize the other personal info which people have left, but I also try to figure out how to sign in on my own, and I read the column headings, but then in some of the columns, people have sort of invented their own conventions on the data entry. So, do I go with a strict interpretation of the host's intentions, or do I follow suit with previous visitors and imitate their usage?
I once found a pastebin with a log containing the error message that I was getting.
This log also had a user id. I took a long shot, googled the id and emailed the person. It turned out they had found the fix, it was in a recent dev build of a library.
I feel the same way, when all hope is lost and I have to join a Discord channel for help. Finding the solution via the search there feels like modern day gold panning.
I went through a simulation issue where I spent days on a problem, had a Microsoft engineer asking for logs and generally wasting my time, eventually found it to be a hp firmware limitation.
I wrote a page on my own blog about it. Was I a good netizen? Because I can only find reddit threads of people being unable to solve it with a google search.
> I wrote a page on my own blog about it. Was I a good netizen?
Yes! Although I don't know why search engines aren't picking it up. But at least you can point people to a blog post, instead of telling them to join a discord, and try to search their archives.
And a few ones from people whose problems are so dissimilar from the original bug that the only way they could have arrived at the thread is the 57th page of Google search for the word "problem".
Somewhere in the annals of cks's blog is a discussion of why it's a good idea to document things you don't do.
We all instinctively know that we should document why we do things that we've done, especially when the rationale was intricate, cost money/time/effort, or there's a business-critical reason for it. But what about the things we don't do?
We can spend a lot of time/money/effort contemplating an action, discussing it and weighing the options, and then at the end of the day/week, we decide that it's better not to do it at all. Shouldn't we document that decision process as well? Won't it save time in the future when someone gets the same bright idea?
I ran into a GitHub issue template a long time ago that had a required section for alternate solutions. It’s amazing how often you find a better solution when you are forced to enumerate viable solutions and compare them.
So, dear HN reader, what's your unsolvable bug - the cursed combination of search terms that inevitably leads you to one of these unsolved (unsolvable) threads?
Mine is "Windows 11 optical spdif dolby 5.1 realtek digital". The entire first page of search results is purple.
My favorite was when I was in college. I spent a long time trying to figure out how to get my WiFi card for my school-issued laptop working in Linux. Someone else posted a fix (with a full explanation of what to do!) and I followed it and it worked!
Then I look at the username and it’s my classmate from down the hall in the same dorm.
And I’m pretty sure I actually did end up in a beach house with them at some point.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 96.5 ms ] threadI once was helping a coworker with a problem and asked about it on a related forum. Later that week he came over and told me how he found a forum where someone else who had the same problem, and their username looked a lot like my name…
I get a segfault when I run the tool. OS: Debian. RAM: 8G. RGB lights: 4. Breakfast: French toast.
...
I have the same problem. Breakfast: bacon and eggs.
Breakfast: iced latte and chocolate croissant. Two sugars.
Breakfast: french-style omelette on toast
So you arrive somewhere like a reception desk, a church, a funeral, and there's a sign-in log with, say, five columns labeled at the top, and a long list of people who've already logged in there.
So I politely try not to scrutinize the other personal info which people have left, but I also try to figure out how to sign in on my own, and I read the column headings, but then in some of the columns, people have sort of invented their own conventions on the data entry. So, do I go with a strict interpretation of the host's intentions, or do I follow suit with previous visitors and imitate their usage?
"Be gracious to the host's request for data; be self-assertive with your willingness to divulge data."
This log also had a user id. I took a long shot, googled the id and emailed the person. It turned out they had found the fix, it was in a recent dev build of a library.
I wrote a page on my own blog about it. Was I a good netizen? Because I can only find reddit threads of people being unable to solve it with a google search.
Yes! Although I don't know why search engines aren't picking it up. But at least you can point people to a blog post, instead of telling them to join a discord, and try to search their archives.
I let Google crawl and index my fix history for me.
* "PM'ed you the fix."
* "Ignore this thread, I figured it out."
* Find a thread discussing the issue, reply to it, then "Thread closed, don't necropost" from a moderator.
* Open a new thread about the issue, then "Thread closed, use the search function next time" from a moderator.
* The fix was hosted on Megaupload or RapidShare
We all instinctively know that we should document why we do things that we've done, especially when the rationale was intricate, cost money/time/effort, or there's a business-critical reason for it. But what about the things we don't do?
We can spend a lot of time/money/effort contemplating an action, discussing it and weighing the options, and then at the end of the day/week, we decide that it's better not to do it at all. Shouldn't we document that decision process as well? Won't it save time in the future when someone gets the same bright idea?
There have been many times where it's been a DenverCoder situation though.
Mine is "Windows 11 optical spdif dolby 5.1 realtek digital". The entire first page of search results is purple.
Any year now, Microsoft will fix their only web application framework such that a "Hello World" app doesn't crash.
Soon! Any year now... any year.
Then I look at the username and it’s my classmate from down the hall in the same dorm.
And I’m pretty sure I actually did end up in a beach house with them at some point.