In article <c2078ca1-c85a-4795-8632-6b005436c...@googlegroups.com>, Rustom Mody <rustompm...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sunday, February 16, 2014 8:53:47 PM UTC+5:30, Roy Smith wrote: > > We get a lot of newbie questions on this list. People are eager to jump > > in and answer them (which is wonderful), but sometimes we get off on > > tangents about trivia and lose sight of the real question, and our > > audience. > > > The particular one that set me off just now (I'm leaving off the names > > because it's a generic problem) was somebody asking a basic, "how do I > > code an algorithm to manipulate this data" question. They presented > > some sample data as a tuple of tuples. > > > One of the (otherwise well-written and informative) responses started > > out with a 20-line treatise on the difference between lists and tuples, > > and why the OP should have used a list of tuples. Nothing they said was > > wrong, but it wasn't essential to explaining the algorithm. > > > What I'm asking is that when people answer questions, try to figure out > > what the core question really is, and answer that first. If there's > > other suggestions you can make for how things might be further improved, > > add those later. > > > Also, try to figure out what the experience level of the OP is, and > > scale your answer to fit their ability. I've seen people who are > > obviously struggling with basic concepts in an introductory programming > > class get responses that include list comprehensions, lambdas, > > map/reduce, etc. These are things people should learn along the road to > > Python guru-ness, but if you haven't figured out what a for loop is yet, > > those things are just going to confuse you even more. > > Agreed! > > Just one WARNING! > If you include comprehensions I shall include re's <wink> Moi? -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
