Re: Re: PM: A Place To Learn

> These types of responses were the reason I didn't answer questions for the first few months I was here.

I've been a member of PM for over 2 months (and frequented the premises for a while before joining). I've been (seriously) learning perl for over 6 months, and messing about with scripts for over a year.
However, I've never yet answered anybody's code question, because for even those questions that I know the answer, I know I'm not yet knowledgeable enough to give a "good" and correct answer.
I'm continually learning better, more efficient or safer ways of doing things.

While the rebuked answer was "correct", most people seem to be of the opinion that it wasn't a very good answer.

Of course, I'm appreciative of any answers people will give me, and I certainly don't want a "select few" to be left answering all the questions,
but I don't want PM to be a case of "the blind leading the blind" - and having to try out code from peoples replies that either doesn't work, or is very inefficient.

Basically: don't give out answers unless it's a good one.

Comment on Re: Re: PM: A Place To Learn

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Re: Re: Re: PM: A Place To Learn by demerphq (Chancellor) on Apr 05, 2002 at 10:25 UTC
Basically: don't give out answers unless it's a good one. I really hope not many people agree with you. Some of the best threads here were started off by someone posting a non-optimal (in some respect or another) answer, to which a bunch of the more experienced types ended up discusing and dissecting and generally educating the rest of us.... I think maybe a better approach would be "Dont give an answer as being definitive unless you know it is, but also don't hesitate to offer an honest attempt cause you'll probably end up learning from it." Yves / DeMerphq --- Writing a good benchmark isnt as easy as it might look.	[reply]
Re(3): PM: A Place To Learn by shotgunefx (Parson) on Apr 04, 2002 at 21:07 UTC
How do you know it's a good answer? I agree to an extent about "the blind leading the blind" but that even happens now. There are quite a few monks that I can be pretty sure that their code works and works fairly well no matter how quick it was cobbled together, ( tye,merlyn, tilly, dws, crazyinsomniac, japhy, juerd ) to name just a few. If I thought about it, I could probably come up with a 50 or 60 more. I think when you hang around enough you get a good feeling for who knows what they're doing. If you're not sure you test the answer. But on the other hand, people giving answers (even inefficient or broken ones) is an even better way to learn as almost always someone will point out flaws in their answer to the asker and the answerer. Now they both know and will probably code better for it. -Lee "To be civilized is to deny one's nature."	[reply]
Re: Re: Re: PM: A Place To Learn by fireartist (Chaplain) on Apr 05, 2002 at 14:29 UTC
o.k., you've both made some good points there, and I agree with the principle of learning from mistakes that you both mention. I think then, that the only course of action is to repay the help and courtesy shown me by others, by being more willing to answer questions myself. (uh, wasn't that the point of it all?) You've sure done it, be prepared to see more of me now... ;)	[reply]