The single most insightful article ever about asking for programming help.

[Dyndrilliac]

Many people here and on other boards dedicated to programming and other similar subjects related to computer science and software engineering often ask for help regarding problems with their applications, and simply describe the abnormal or otherwise anomalous behavior and then proceed to ask, "What's wrong?". The people who intend to help then throw theory after theory at the person, trying to solve his/her problem. This occurs to me because I just read the most interesting article written by Raymond Chen (a senior developer at Microsoft) on his blog and thought that it could be put to good use here.

Read it for yourself here. Unfortunately, this doesn't cover things like compiler/linker errors, but it is quite the refreshing sentiment in an age where people are generally spoon fed the information they seek, and even swallowed up by the information they don't seek.