I'm working on a programming design project and I'm looking for quick/short answers to the following question:

You're using a program on your computer and you have something you need/want to do, but you don't know how to do it.  What's the first thing you do?

I check teh googles, and then I RTFM

I ask my fiance.

1. I click on the help menu...
2. if that doesn't work I google or wiki the answer, or on the odd occasion that there is a manual (a rarity these days) I read or re-read it.

Usually start by wading through the help file.

Then I generally ask these people:

http://computertypes.proboards.com/index.cgi

(Apologies to moderators. This is a purely computer help site. I've been a member for over 12 years. Nothing controversal there at all.)

Quote from: beth~chella on March 11, 2010, 05:13:23 PM
I check teh googles, and then I RTFM

ditto
(10 characters)

If the program has a built-in Help facility, I use that first. Next is Google. After that, I try the message boards that I'm a member of to see if anyone else has a similar program.

I kick it.

No, no, jk.

Quote from: Shades O'Grey on March 11, 2010, 05:31:22 PM
If the program has a built-in Help facility, I use that first. Next is Google. After that, I try the message boards that I'm a member of to see if anyone else has a similar program.

More like this.

I open up Terminator (netbook) or Konsole (desktop) and then I type man (program_name) and see if I used  it wrong, and then I run it from a terminal and see what errors if any the program reports.

If there isn't a man entry I generally look on the  Ubuntu, Crunchbang, or Mepis forums for information.

If I cannot find any information there, I generally fire up synaptic and see if there are any associated packages I don't have, and download them.

if that doens't work I look for an alternative program.

I'll look through the menus and mouse over all the buttons to see if there's one that sounds right. Then I'll check the help function - some programs I use, like MAPLE, actually have useful help interfaces, but the vast majority don't. If I can't find the answer within the program, I Google. If Google doesn't have the solution, I assume the program doesn't do what I want (or at least not easily) and I go looking for free software that's designed to do what I'm trying to do.

I look to see if I can intuitively find what I'm looking for like if I'm looking for networking options I look in 'settings' or something to do with graphs in the graphs section or something. If I can't find it I ask google.

I'm with kyrill on the 'mouse-over' with the addition that I click every button to see what it does, even if it doesn't do what I want (one eventually will) I'll know what they do next time.

... And if none of them does what I want and I still remember what I wanted to do in the first place (pushing random buttons is fun after all) I hump Google.

When all else fails,( and sometimes sooner) like help, google, manual etc. I join Susan's chat and find Flan.

Hi Ketsy

If you have a friend or teacher, lecturer or professor they may also know they answer.

I would also use the following help button, man (program name), run a search engine with Firefox, the answer will turn up for sure then.

Kind regards
Sarah B

Google, definitely. Or phone a friend 

I used to just have my kids fix it.  Now they are both out of college and long-gone, so I have to call them and have them fix it.

If it's a cli program  - check the usage message, then glance at the man page.

conf file - read the comments, then google. Starting by looking at examples.

Else - google. That'll pull up any relevent documentation (howtos, forums, newsgroup archives, etc).

I am biased. I don't use commercial software, so my support options are very limited. That said, I do prefer my current way of doing things over a helpdesk or friend.

I feel a bit bad now... In programs I have written that have a GUI I never once provided text when you mouse over something! In fact, I don't even know how to do that in Delphi/Lazarus. I never even knew that people used those features...

Then again I do most of my stuff as CLI programs for DOS and Linux so maybe that makes sense.

Oh, I forgot to mention before in programs that are a bit more complicated like GIMP or Blender Youtube is my first choice, there are tutorials there that show you how to do almost anything.

Hi Hikari

I know how you feel, I wrote programs in Assembly, let alone GUI programs.  The only help that people got was the 'help' command that could be used on the CLI in a terminal window.

But we wrote programs in those days to assume that those who were going to use the program as 'idiots' so we had to make sure that anything that could happen was catered for.

Did not really make any difference, they soon found a way to break the program.

The Internet is like a 'one humongous library' and Google is like your catalog card system.

Kind regards
Sarah B

Go thorugh menues to find what im looking for
if not, google
then 'help' in the program.