Re: Flame retardant
Re: Flame retardant
- Subject: Re: Flame retardant
- From: Sherm Pendley <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 22 May 2002 20:09:00 -0400
On Wednesday, May 22, 2002, at 02:49 PM, email@hidden wrote:
And who decides what is "very relevant"?
Google! :-)
I'm only half joking. If the first Google search for the relevant terms
that I attempt returns up several pages of links, the first few of which
are to FAQ's and tutorials, then (to me at least), it's rather obvious
that the questioner hasn't put much effort, if any, into helping himself.
Yes, you can argue that he should already know these things, but then
you will get questions like "What's Unicode, and how do I write a
string in it?"
That question fails the "Google Test," sorry. Enter "what is unicode,"
or even just "unicode" at Google, and the very first match you find is
"unicode.org." It's followed closely by the "UTF-8 and Unicode FAQ."
Indeed, this seems to be the very heart of the matter: it takes time
to learn *how* to find answers; it's not a skill that comes built into
the human brain. Beginners, *because they are beginners*, haven't yet
mastered finding answers.
To paraphrase Edison, "programming is 10% inspiration and 90%
perspiration." Newbies who haven't yet mastered the art of finding
answers in the available docs need to be helped to learn that skill - it
is perhaps the most valuable skill a programmer can have. It's the
source of the perspiration in Edison's statement.
Simply giving newbies the exact answers they're asking for may help them
through the immediate problem they're facing, but doing so won't help
them avoid such problems in the future. To paraphrase the christian
bible, "give a man some code, and you've answered his question; teach a
man to search the docs, and you've answered all his questions."
If someone posts the "what is unicode" question from above, a direct
pointer to unicode.org will give him the information he wants. On the
other hand, a suggestion that they search Google for the term "Unicode"
will not only lead him to the same information in fairly short order, it
also helps encourage self sufficiency. He'll go to Google and find his
answers in just a few seconds. Hopefully, he then thinks to himself "it
took me a couple hours to get an answer back from the mailing list, and
a couple seconds to get the answer from Google... maybe I'll try Google
first next time."
Now, having said all that, please note that I'm *not* advocating answers
that consist entirely of "RTFM," or overly harsh, flame-ridden responses.
sherm--
Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today. There might be a law
against it by that time.
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