Over the past couple weeks, I've noticed a marked increase in a number of posts that simply give an all-code solution to a question, often with a comment like "Do you want something like this?" or "If you substitute your sub foo for mine, it'll work", with very little explaination about what's going on, and why.

Something similiar to this came up this morning: a new monk posted a fairly simple question, stating that he was new, and learning Perl, and within minutes an all-code post had popped up.

This is great from the OP's PoV - he gets the solution he needs, no thinking, just cut-paste and all's go. It's not helping him, though, in the long run. He hasn't learnt anything, he maybe doesn't understand why the code does what it does, and why it works for his scenario, and how he could implement those new ideas into his code in the future.

This seems to be increasingly leading to a situation where strings of very similar questions are posted, all of which attract similar all-code replies, that are of very little future use either as reference when the question is asked again, or to people trying to master or improve their Perl, using PerlMonks as a support forum. I can't help but think that this is ultimately damaging to the Monastery as a knowledge base as a whole.

I don't know if other people feel the same way about this, and I'm certainly not saying that people shouldn't post all-code replies - but please, could people take time to think about the learning potential of what it is they're writing, and at least comment that perfect solution before they click 'Submit'? It seems to me that this can only be beneficial to everyone in the long-term, from those reading the post and trying to improve themselves, to those Super Searching to try and find an answer to a similar problem six months down the line.

What do others think? As I say, this is something I've noticed over the past couple weeks that didn't seem to take place as much when I first joined (not so long ago *grin*). Do people see it as a problem, or a potential problem, long-term?

-- Foxcub
#include www.liquidfusion.org.uk

In reply to Learning in the Monastery by Tanalis

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