Being Helpful

For most things in life, the ultimate goal is to GetItDone?. Sometimes we need assistance in achieving this goal - after all, ManyHandsMakeLightWork?. However, one of the major obstacles when trying to GetItDone? is when people are BeingHelpful.

Yes. Humans basically interpret questions in the NearestFittingContext. But sometimes they think you are just shy, or don't know the domain and thus assume the next larger context - and getting out of that mode can be difficult.

Examples:

Public transport enquiries: "When is the next bus/train to <stop> on <route>?" elicits "Where are you going, when do you want to get there? How would you like to travel?" etc. I asked for something specific because I already know the rest. If I didn't, then I'd have asked you "How do I get from <here> to <there>?" Easily applies to any other enquiry scenario. Especially the legend that is most domestic ISPs' so-called "technical support" lines.

SecretWords?: Being called out of the blue by someone with whom you do important personal business (bank, insurers, brokers, government agencies, etc.) You ask them to prove who they are or give a number to call them back (ExcessiveParanoia?? Maybe, maybe not). They ask for your secret word, you decline. The operator happily reassures you that they are from the institution in question, and proves such by reading your secret word back to you.

MicrosoftWord: The "Office Assistant", a.k.a. that bloody paperclip. Enough said.

JavaScript: Any integer value beginning with a 0 is octal. JavaScript is WeaklyTyped. Many mathematical operations when perpetrated on strings result in those strings being parsed as integers. Consider parsing out a date - you decide to sanity-check the string before you creating the date. But your string is "2008/08/09" ...

"WeaklyTyped" is not the problem, it's JavaScript being stupidly typed. Tag-free typing makes it easier to predict what the interpreter will do. Type tags are a bane to programmer sanity. TopsDynamicTypesDoneRight. --top

Counter-examples: ...