AzamSharp

Learning by Answering
published on 12/2/2008 8:33:26 PM

I joined www.asp.net forums back in 2003. Since then I have posted more then 4000 posts on the forum. Some of them were questions and most of them were answers. The idea of taking someone’s problem and solving it really feels refreshing. First it helps the person who is in need of the answer and second it helps you as a developer to learn something new.

In my own personal experience I have learned a lot through answering questions on the forum. The best part is that if you don’t know the answer someone else will answer it and you will benefit from it.

When I was in high school my math teacher told me how to prepare myself for the final exam. His technique involved answering single question from all the exercises in the book instead of answering all the questions of a single exercise at one time.

At that time I did not understood this technique but now it all makes sense. Let’s say you are only answering questions about the GridView control. This will make your abilities with GridView stronger but in other areas you will lack understanding. If you change your technique to answer questions about GridView, HttpHandlers, Session, Cache etc then you are targeting more areas and increasing your knowledge in many different areas.

ASP.NET forum is still a great place to learn about the .NET technology. I encourage you to check out ASP.NET forums for any help or providing help to others.

StackOverFlow is another new website which has entered the .NET galaxy. StackOverFlow is not only about .NET as it covers many different technologies under its shade. I have also noticed that the level of questions asked is much advanced then on ASP.NET forums. The main reason for this is because most new comers turn to ASP.NET forums for answers.

In my opinion both the websites are equally important and provide a wealth of information to the users. In my humble opinion reading and answering questions remains the best way to develop your skill set.

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