[r00fus]

I second this opinion. My experience has been, when I post to stackoverflow, it forces me to explain the problem as clearly as possible to someone else. In doing so, I have sometimes found the solution in the code or a level of abstraction higher/lower.

Even when I post, if it's not quickly solved and gets very few hits, at least I justify the problem as being non-trivial... this is also useful in determining cost/benefit of even solving the problem (perhaps it's better to spend your time on other things).