Re: Is there a tutorial/sample for displaying...
Re: Is there a tutorial/sample for displaying...
- Subject: Re: Is there a tutorial/sample for displaying...
- From: Nicholas Riley <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 16:55:27 -0500
- Mail-followup-to: dave dowling <email@hidden>, email@hidden
On Wed, May 15, 2002 at 01:03:44PM -0400, dave dowling wrote:
>
why i disagree (if that's the point being made):
>
i think these groups are not only about learning, but also about
>
maximizing one's resources. Scot obviously searched for an answer,
>
at least a little bit. he could spend an hour looking, or ask the
>
list. he asked the list, and got an answer. he saved what could
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have turned into an hour or so, and Erik spent a minute or so
>
telling him where to go (i won't elaborate on that point). Erik
>
enabled Scot, via the list, to maximize his time resources. now
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Scot (and others who read Erik's reply) has a better idea of where
>
to look for this kind of info. that in itself (where to look) is
>
part of the learning curve.
Sure, but wouldn't you get tired of answering the same questions week
after week? It's basic etiquette to search a list for answers to your
question. People ask for sample code when they obviously haven't
looked at Apple's sample code. Or they ask for basic API information
(how do you create a contextual menu item) which is also easily
answered by referring to Apple's reference docs. I did a search at
developer.apple.com with those exact words and the first hit was the
document I was looking for. It's hard to tell without asking if the
questioner simply didn't know that developer.apple.com was the right
place to look for information about development on Mac OS X (?!?) or
didn't care.
I often perform Web searches with the exact words in the posted
question. I understand the problems of not being able to phrase your
question so search engines will return useful results, and I'd be
lying if I didn't say that the ease of availability of an answer to
the question influences my likelihood of responding to it (assuming I
know the answer of course :)
>
i teach guitar. kids ask me to show them easy chords. i don't
>
tell them to go get a chord book. i show them the chords. i write
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them down. i may recommend a chord book. in addition, if there
>
were a bunch of eager minds observing, like there are in this
>
forum, they'd all learn a new chord, as well as where to find more.
Sure, I really enjoy (strangely enough!) helping beginners who show a
willingness to learn. The 'where to find more' is the issue. I don't
know whether this would help, but there are about 10 resources I use
when I don't have the answer to a Mac programming problem, and if we
just sent those 10 URLs to every new subscriber of this list, perhaps
it'd help some people and cut down on redundant list traffic. Also,
it's so much better to hear questions phrased as "I wanted to do X,
and I tried Y and Z, but they gave me these results instead of the
desired ones" rather than "how do you do X?" Half the time, when I'm
about to post to the mailing list, I start to write my question that
way, develop a small test case, and discover my problem in the process.
I don't know about cocoa-dev as it's an Apple list, but this might
make sense on macosx-dev.
--
=Nicholas Riley <email@hidden> | <
http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/njriley>
Pablo Research Group, Department of Computer Science and
Medical Scholars Program, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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