I backed myself into a corner. I had just announced a feature in Radio3, and a few moments after doing that, I got a report from a user saying that Radio3 doesn't work.

So I scrambled. I should have tested better. I was angry with myself. Then I calmed down and thought about which of my programming friends would know what the problem was. Clearly this was a problem for Dan MacTough. He groks pipes in Node. He's a plumber, I'm just a user. So I sat down and carefully wrote an email to Dan. With links, and citations to specific bits of code, and a theory of what was going wrong. I never sent the email, didn't have to. I found the problem myself.

When I teach starting programmers how to ask for help, I say they should write the problem up, very carefully, including all relevant info, but nothing else.

In the process, you often figure it out.

The problem was solved by telling request not to follow redirects when doing a proxy. It worked the first time. I felt so good when this happened! Being self-sufficient is a sign of competence and intelligence. That's quite different from being angry with myself for having been sloppy!

And I feel no less gratitude to Dan that I would if he had solved the problem. My inner-Dan solved it. That says he's a good teacher. ;-)