Monty Python - How To Do It

If I had stopped reading after a couple of paragraphs, I would not have been aware the article contained any "actionable advice." Likewise if I had stopped after 3 paragraphs or four or even five. It is only after six paragraphs of putting the student in their place - instead of just linking to StackOverflow's own prose describing good questions - that "First, turn on all compiler warnings" makes an appearance. Is this good advice? Not really. Manipulating compiler setting is a homework task in itself for a student. What could be simpler than setting compiler warnings? It's all right here: [link] However, there's a bit of a logical error in this method. [0] Apparently what a student is supposed to do after turning them on is return to stackOverflow and ask another question. Well at least the author recognizes that turning on compiler warnings isn't really progress toward debugging except in the sense that debugging consists of asking questions on StackOverflow. Yet in fairness, it is hard to call this bad advice to a student struggling to finish an assignment given the next piece of "helpful advice" is: "If your program still has a bug, obtain a rubber duck." The reason I struggle with this being better or worse than the first piece of advice is that at least rubber ducks don't make sport of trolling students with homework questions. [1] According to the article, obtaining a rubber duck will allow the student's code to compile. All that's left is to refactor, write some tests