On Wed, 31 Mar 2010 22:19:27 -0400, Steve Holden wrote: > Steven D'Aprano wrote: >> On Wed, 31 Mar 2010 17:21:18 -0700, Patrick Maupin wrote: >> >>> Doesn't matter though. The OP was sorting lists, not strings, so he >>> knew what I meant. >> >> I have found that when people ask basic questions about fundamental >> Python operations like sorting, it is risky to assume that they will >> know what I meant if I say something different. >> >> Since I've been on both the giving and receiving end of carelessly >> inaccurate answers, I know how frustrating it is to spend significant >> time trying to work out what I was doing wrong, only to be told much >> later "Oh, I meant you should do Y, not X. I thought you would >> understand what I meant." >> > But you surely will admit that you could be held to, well rather than > "be pedantic" perhaps we should say "tend towards the literal"?
I wouldn't so much say "literal" as "precise". *wink* > I'm the same myself, and I know from personal experience that while I am > (simply?) seeking accuracy and truth it sometimes bugs the hell out of > people ... If you think I'm pedantic, you should see some of the guys I work with. I'm frequently on the receiving end of technical corrections. Yes, it's annoying to be in full flow explaining something, only to have somebody point out that you've made a silly mistake, or totally got something wrong, or what you've been calling a NAT device (including to the client) for a week is actually a NAS device *cough*. Annoying or not, if somebody had corrected me earlier, I wouldn't have looked quite so ignorant for quite so long, so all things considered I'd prefer to have my mistakes pointed out so I can stop making them. > It's a geek thing. Heavens, geeks on a programming forum! Who could possibly have expected such a thing? -- Steven -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
