I think for a homework question, "This is a homework question, and I'm totally stuck" would be a perfectly good way to preface a question that would almost always get someone a useful answer here.

I don't think the preface "This is a job interview question, and I'm totally stuck" would get treated the same way without a much more detailed explanation. So, I think it's worth distinguishing the two, and responding differently.

And, in general, while not answering is an option, and sometimes an effective one, very few questions go unanswered here. I have seen a lot of these questions treated as if they were homework questions (a bit of snark, a pointer to the documentation, almost always ultimately followed by a fairly comprehensive right answer), and I think there are reasons that could be harmful when it's actually an interview question.


In reply to Re^2: Stop with the interview questions already by ssandv
in thread Stop with the interview questions already by ssandv

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":



  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.