Honestly, I thought the same thing. (Why doesn't he go to stack overflow and ask?) then I thought. "Oh. My. God. What if he's never even heard of StackOverflow

Honestly, I thought the same thing. (Why doesn't he go to stack overflow and ask?) then I thought. "Oh. My. God. What if he's never even heard of StackOverflow?" So actually, the above comment isn't inappropriate in the least. A new thread in Hacker News honestly isn't the right place to ask for help with programming connectivity to Microsoft Access (Hint: use ODBC). But stack overflow is. Quite often, the "use search" is a rude response ... more often, for example in the case of Hacker News it's also about as useful as a humorous yet slightly rude colloquial comparison between two disparate entities. (eg: tits on a bull). Anyways. He is right. HN isn't SXCH. His comment was worded politely and may prove useful to the original poster.