> I suspect most people don't like reading reference material so asking random stuff on SO works for them This is probably true. I'm not a Windows developer a

> I suspect most people don't like reading reference material so asking random stuff on SO works for them This is probably true. I'm not a Windows developer and on a recent project I had to use their IDE (which turns out to quite nice, if you are an IDE person) and a set of their APIs. I read, but did not understand, some pretty fundamental/basic MS-authored documentation. I found a few answers to questions related to other people not understanding it either, and was on my way again. To be fair to MS, it was documented, completely and accurately. I just wasn't accustomed to some of their calling conventions and was getting yelled at by the linker. EDIT: Outside of embedded systems, where there are a lot fewer moving parts than on your typical MS OS box, it's been a while (20 years?) since I was thrown at an environment where everything changed from what I am accustomed to. OS. Language. CPU architecture target. IDE. IDE configuration for project build. Build process. SDKs. Calling convention. Oh, and the 2M line code-base that I had just been introduced to (and where none of the MS Visual Studio project files had been checked into version control - so I'm fumbling in the dark there). Googling for the error message and landing on SO at least gets you to the point that you know you have a configuration problem vs a calling convention problem. That tells you where you need to start looking in the documentation.