Originally Posted by Ronald Roe, post: 247516
Again, we're talking about 2 different kinds of help here. It's the old "teach a man to fish" adage. I'm all for writing exactly what someone needs if that's what the situation calls for. If you search through my posts, you'll find numerous times where I've done that. Some that took me considerable time to write. However, you have a dude who doesn't know how to make a columnar layout. The code you wrote, which would work more or less, ties someone with little knowledge to a set of CSS rules they likely won't understand, and when they break it, which they will eventually, they'll have no idea how to fix it. On the other hand, instead of spoon-feeding an answer if you point someone off in a direction where they can learn actual concepts, you've helped them far more.
That isn't to say that your approach is always wrong. It's better for higher level concepts and fixing existing broken code. It's better for the "I'm trying to use CSS animations, but it isn't working" situations. It's just not going to work for a situation where someone is trying to learn how to code basic layouts. Maybe you helped him with this one, but the very next one will come along, and he'll have no idea.
And take a second to consider your "useless bit of code" comment. That bit of code is the key to making the whole layout work. There's only one other way to do what he's trying to do right now (until flexbox gets finalized and implemented). And really, there's only one "track" it could lead someone down: learning how floats work. And the majority of that info will pertain to layout anyway.