Added to that, it is a hint to the OP that most compile/run-time
errors can be explored/investigated at the mindpord site. So
the *next* time the OP sees a NoClassdefFoundError, or an
AccessControlException, or an.. (etc) they know a good
place to start, in investigating it.
As Andrew usually puts it "this is not a help desk".
In my view you generally should NOT hand the solution on a plate. You
should give general information useful to solve that class of
problems. In the process of applying those hints, the questioner
becomes a better programmer.
There is a matter of balance. If you give too general a hint, the
student becomes discouraged and gets the idea he/she is hopeless. If
you give too specific a hint, they don't learn anything. Just right,
and the student gets a great rush of accomplishment, (which reinforces
learning), and learns the most about that class of problem.
If the questioner is an accomplished Java programmer, simply handing
over the answer is appropriate. They have probably already tried the
usual mechanisms and for some reason went off on some wrong tangent in
understanding.
The other way I look at this is, the questioner is NOT the primary
intended audience. It is all the other students. The other students
are not interested in the minutiae of the problem. They want to learn
something they can apply to THEIR problems. So you should try to give
advice that is generally applicable.
What I am often doing when I come in late to the conversation is
pointing out the student could have handled this on his own simply by
looking up a few keywords in the Java glossary. Then there is no
delay waiting for an answer that may never come, or may come with a
large dose of invective.
