Victor Subervi wrote:
The aim was not arrogance, but expression of exasperation
"Walk a mile in my mocassins." You can't do it. I'm an artist.
I think out of my right hemisphere, not my left like you. You
couldn't possibly understand.
[snip]
Thank you for your help anyway. Thank you for your patience.
Please try to understand. It starts by understanding you can't
understand.
[snip]
The whole universe is a program. I program to understand it in
a way you couldn't even begin to grasp.
I'm not sure how I become the one accused of arrogance. Or where
my right-brain ceases to be as magnificent as yours and my
capacity to understand you falls so short -- whether it's
speaking Spanish or being conversational in ASL; authoring and
illustrating a children's book; striving for beautiful code
(Stephen's recent post well summarizes elegance in code);
submitting my work status reports in [limerick, sonnet, rap,
comic, pop-music spoof, crossword puzzle, etc]; cooking;
sewing/crafting/needlework; painting; wood-working;
guitar-playing; the philosophy minor; creating balloon art, etc.
It would seem I use both sides of the brain, like many others
on the list here. For just a single example reference, check out
Adrian Holovaty (one of the Django founders) jamming some
beautiful guitar-work on YouTube.
The problem is that I quite literally can't think like you. I
have to force myself to do it every time. To you it's as
natural as breathing, which is why you can't relate.
In time and with repeated exercise, it's possible to develop both
sides of the brain. One side may dominate (and I'll forthrightly
declare that my left brain dominates), but it doesn't excuse
failure to strengthen the weaker side.
You have my continued promise that I will do all
I can to edit my questions as intelligently as you would
before I post them. Trust me, I don't like looking foolish,
and I know I do. You should recognize that that alone is
chiding enough. It doesn't stop me, however, for continuing to
program.
I appreciate your efforts to edit -- I've provided a bit of a
check-list that you can use to make sure you've googled for the
obvious; taken the time understand the problem in both a local
context and stepping away to see the big-picture view of the
problem; taken a survey of your available tools; read the
tracebacks to try and understand what they're telling you; and
when you post (with replies inline), provide the code exactly as
it's erroring for you (stripped down examples are nice, as long
as they reproduce the problem) instead of transcribing something
like your code; if you get exceptions post the full traceback not
just your interpretation of them; and if you're running in a
non-conventional environment such as a web-server instead of a
standalone application, it's helpful to note it up front. The
perennial "Smart Questions" article by ESR might also be a useful
read in ingratiating yourself.
By demonstrating that you've exerted the effort to help the list
help you, it encourages us to provide the best answers. On the
whole, the list does enjoy being helpful.
And when you do get a helpful answer, saying thanks is always
appreciated...
I appreciate Tim's advice
something I've noted you've improved on lately...thanks in return.
I came across as I intended.
Your intent was to come across condescendingly as a right-brained
artist struggling to be understood yet obdurately plunging ahead
without striving to facilitate others in helping you?
-tkc
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