It depends on the question, and if you know the right keywords to use. People starting off in programming and working through a book alone generally won't.

Of course, there's always irc.

Totally agree. Just trying out stackoverflow was probably worth it. Nevertheless when I thought I had the right answer I would have liked to compare it to other/the "right" solution. Also if I already spent a fair amount of time searching and had problems to phrase the questions the right way for Google (not knowing the terminology) some kind of help might have been a good thing.

On the other hand I might have used thatcher help too early...