Fried Egg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: ... > Why does anyone care about "why" people do things when they ask a > specific technical question on a newsgroup? Maybe op is risking his
Because experienced techies have learned that people (including other techies) often ask the wrong "specific technical question", having previously made some badly-founded assumptions and premature preliminary design decisions; by taking a step back, and getting the "why", it's therefore quite often possible to help the querant come up with a much better overall solution. The classic example is right at the start of Bentley's classic "Writing Efficient Programs" (or maybe "Programming Pearls" -- been a while since I read either!-), where another programmer asks him how to invoke the system sort from within a program, and Bentley at first wastes a lot of time and energy answering the exact question that was asked -- but finally steps back, DOES ask the crucial question, "why do you want to know?", and helps the querant find a solution which runs rings around anything the querant might have come up with by shelling out to a system sort. Many experienced techies are familiar with Bentley's masterpieces, and the lesson appears to have sunk in -- or it may well have been rediscovered independently many, many times, of course. It's unfortunate that you appear not to understand or accept this, but I hope nobody will change their helpful behavor and motivation as a consequence of your complaint. It's only by relentlessly asking "why", that very experienced developers can *most* help others. Alex -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
