[dylandrop]

StackOverflow remains not only my #1 resource, but the resource I give to people when tutoring them. I encourage using it not only as a helper for bugs, but also for questions like "how best to do X". The sooner they use StackOverflow for their programming issues, the sooner they start understanding what they're doing.

What really helped me out when I was first starting doing web development was that no matter the question, people had the same problem as me -- usually VERBATIM. I can't stress how nice it is to copy and paste something into Google and get back the answer.

On a final note, I encourage everyone to try to give back a little into StackOverflow. I've been going for about 2 years and have around 4 thousand reputation built up, mostly on Rails questions. But at the same time, I'm starting to notice that there are a lot of rookie answers (although this might be a Rails-specific issue)... and this is coming from someone who's still in college and not a full time web dev yet. If you're good, answer a few questions.