Quick post today. Currently having a nice mini lecture on client/server stuff by Blake Johnson.

Anyway real quick I just wanted to get down on paper, or on the keys, how awesome the programming community is.

Yesterday at the end of the day I was struggling with some Google Graph stuff. I wanted to head home a little early to get to the gym so I though I’d throw some darts online and see if any of them stuck.

I posted two questions online hoping that maybe by the time I got home (1.5 hour commute) maybe somebody would help me. I put a question on Stack Overflow and also the Google Chart’s Forum.

I sent my two questions, packed up my keys, and as I opened the door to leave The Flatiron School I get an email response from someone from the Charts forum. I couldn’t believe it. The thread that I asked a question on hadn’t been active at all for a month, and a member responded to me in less than 2 minutes.

Amazing. I have learned so much in 10 weeks and I contribute a the large majority of that to the resources I have to my disposal here at The Flatiron School, but I feel more confident now that even when I am not a student here and on my own at 2am, I will have no trouble getting the help I need. The community is unreal.

Here is the ongoing conversation I am having with one of the users: here.

I am officially not only searching google blogs or forums from now on, but I will not be bashful at all in asking questions to the public community. This is similar to my early resistance to asking questions in class, but the first time I asked a dumb question that was not met with laughter I was over that. Same thing here.

And as a side not for only searching blogs on google now. Yesterday I was having trouble with a dashboard for Google Graph’s and standard google searching wasn’t giving my anything helpful. But then I searched strictly blogs, and not only was the first blog exactly what I was looking for but it was also a hold-your-hand style tutorial that was beyond perfect for what I was looking for. Boom.

In my programming career I have asked two questions to the public forum with both being answered within minutes as well as both responders had back and forth conversations with me. Amazing.

Maybe in my spare time I’ll find a way to do analytics on this. Would be really interesting to see the average time it takes someone to respond to a S-Overflow or forum question. I totally love data crunching so maybe that will be something I can do.

Also I’m thinking of asking this guy what his GitHub is and tip him on GitTip because I would totally do that.