Front page | perl.beginners |
Postings from August 2009
On Mon Aug 17 2009 @ 4:09, Uri Guttman wrote: > >>>>> "I" == Ian <pcs305@gmail.com> writes: > > I> Unfortunately I'm not an expert. I just read a few books and this list etc. > > a couple of things. it is good that you are offering to help but as you > claim not to be an expert, it can hurt more than help. there are plenty > of experts on this list who can help and fixing up weak code offered > from beginners makes our work even harder. This has come up before, as I recall, but either way, I have to disagree. There are a LOT of us here who are far less than expert, but more than novice users. I don't agree that we shouldn't offer our (presumably less than expert) code. If anything, it can be a good way for us to learn as well. To clarify, I think anyone (expert or otherwise) should only offer code that they feel good about. If you have no idea how to tackle a problem, then it would be unhelpful to spew out some random code. On the other hand, your response seems to go too far in the other direction (advice and ideas, sure, but no code except from experts). One other thing worth saying: Ian seems to me to display the habit that a lot of first-time (or rare) posters do of over-apologizing for an answer. I do it myself here and on other forums, and I see it in my students all the time. It's a pretty natural way to try to deflect potential criticism. (Well, I'm not really sure, this is probably wrong, but...) I mention this because we shouldn't let it prejudice us against the answer. Again, I think there's room for non-experts, even in code. Just my two cents, TThread Previous | Thread Next