While I agree with this in principle, sometimes the Primary Document isn't that helpful.

I'm not a big map() function user. Never saw (nor looked for) a good way to put it to use. The docs in the O'reilly books *do* explain how it works, but not really why you'd use it. I was modifying the monkchat.pl script and in there found an excellent implementation of map(). Suddenly, useful ways that I might use it became a lot more obvious.

While this wasn't the result of a question in monastery, similiar 'hand holding' takes place. I agree that there are some questions where the asker obviously didn't try any available resources, be that the Q&A, AltaVista, Google, perl.com, perl.org, or whatever. But there are questions that are asked that aren't well addressed by the books or the PODs. When I see questions like that, I like to post a quick code example of how one might do it. Often, and in the case of a recent post, someone came back with better code. I learned something, and hopefully the original poster learned something. Would they or I have learned the same this by simply being referred to the Primary Document? Questionable.

I will add that I am strongly in favor of providing the link to the Primary Document, along with the explanation. But not simply instead of it.

--Chris

In reply to (jcwren) RE: RE: RE: RE: In defense of criticism by jcwren
in thread In defense of criticism by jjhorner

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