There are no stupid questions.
Only stupid people asking questions.

An anonymous monk recently asked a question that appears to be a homework question. A helpful monk opined

If you can't think of at least two purely mechanical ways of solving this problem, you need to [...] drop the class you're in.

Well, yes; but still. I've picked up a lot of Perl tricks over the years by looking at questions where

• I knew a perfectly serviceable answer to the question.
• Another poster came up with a better answer than I could have given. It might have been
  • Shorter
  • Generalized to more cases.
  • Used a Perl feature that I'd forgotten
  • Easier to understand
  • Protected better against an edge case that I'd overlooked
• So I concluded that I could learn a lot reading the answers to stupid questions.

Which is why I'm (occaisionally) happy to answer questions for complete newbies who should rtfm before they post here. I appreciate questions that are clearly posed, even if the answer is blindingly obvious.

Monks who post very long questions for which I cannot understand what they want even after three readings, on the other hand, can rot in the dungeon.

throop

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Update: I agree with tye that this would be better in PerlMonks Discussion.

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