Re: List-etiquette (was: RETRIEVING AN ARRAY ENTRY FROM AN ARRAY)
Re: List-etiquette (was: RETRIEVING AN ARRAY ENTRY FROM AN ARRAY)
- Subject: Re: List-etiquette (was: RETRIEVING AN ARRAY ENTRY FROM AN ARRAY)
- From: John Randolph <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 5 Feb 2004 15:44:23 -0800
On Feb 5, 2004, at 12:35 PM, mmalcolm crawford wrote:
On Feb 5, 2004, at 11:35 AM, Jens Bauer wrote:
Some time ago, someone posted a good "list etiquette" link.
Unfortunately I forgot the address, but found 2 that are quite short,
and mentions the basics...
Oh, OK, this gives me an opportunity to recommend another article:
"How To Ask Questions The Smart Way"
<http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html>
Incidentally, the best bit of advice in that essay (in my opinion, of
course) is:
Describe the goal, not the step
If you are trying to find out how to do something (as opposed to
reporting a bug), begin by describing the goal. Only then describe the
particular step towards it that you are blocked on.
Often, people who need technical help have a high-level goal in mind
and get stuck on what they think is one particular path towards the
goal. They come for help with the step, but don't realize that the
path is wrong. It can take a lot of effort to get past this.
Stupid:
How do I get the color-picker on the FooDraw program to take a
hexadecimal RGB value?
Smart:
I'm trying to replace the color table on an image with values of my
choosing. Right now the only way I can see to do this is by editing
each table slot, but I can't get FooDraw's color picker to take a
hexadecimal RGB value.
The second version of the question is smart. It allows an answer that
suggests a tool better suited to the task.
This kind of thing comes up over and over again, on every developer
mailing list I've ever frequented. It's also very good advice for bug
reports, DTS incidents, and developer feedback messages.
-jcr
John C. Randolph <email@hidden> (408) 974-8819
Sr. Cocoa Software Engineer,
Apple Worldwide Developer Relations
http://developer.apple.com/cocoa/index.html
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