in reply to Perl Personalities

Abigail is very smart. Abigail knows a lot about Perl. Abigail has done quite a bit with it, and has answered MANY a question. Abigail does not like being asked questions that are in the FAQ, or that have already been asked in the newsgroup (since anyone who asks such questions are too lazy to research the question on their own).

Abigail is also fickle to an extent which bothers me. One question Abigail answered was:

"How can I display colored text?"

Abigail's answer was:

"<font color='...'>"

I was most displeased with Abigail's flippant answer. That was all Abigail wrote -- no "just kidding, here's more about what you probably wanted to know...", just that answer. The poster was not asking about HTML output (and why should Abigail respond with such an answer, seeing as how HTML and its related markup are verboten on clpm?), but rather about ANSI color.

Abigail is an interesting person to meet -- the amount of raw Perl knowledge Abigail has is rather awe-inspiring. But I really think Abigail needs to lighten up a little, or at least curb some of the frustration that gets pent up.

japhy -- Perl and Regex Hacker

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Re: Re: Perl Personalities
by myocom (Deacon) on Jan 07, 2001 at 10:31 UTC

    While I generally agree that flippant answers should be followed by greater explanations, one of my favorite Abigailisms went something like this:

    Q: How do I get the date/time for this time tomorrow?

    A: sleep 86400; print scalar localtime;

[reply]
[d/l]
      Q: How do I get the date/time for this time tomorrow?
      A: sleep 86400; print scalar localtime;

      Did you see Ilya Zakharevich's response to that? Here it is:

      This implementation is very pessimal speed-wise. Here is an important optimization:

              sub tomorrow_date {
          sleep 86_400;
          return localtime();
          sleep -86_400;
        }

      [download]

[reply]
[d/l]
      I think it was more like:
      Q. How do I get yesterday's date?
      A. $yesterday = localtime; sleep 86400; print "It was $yesterday\n";

      -- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker

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[d/l]
Re: Re: Perl Personalities
by KM (Priest) on Jan 07, 2001 at 04:49 UTC
    Totally agree. He should lighten up a bit, or bite his tongue much of the time. I do respect his talent, however. Of course, Tom has been known to be flippant and crude, although you can find valuable information in his answers.

    I stopped reading USENET groups some time ago, but someone should have told Abigail 'NO WEB' to his answer ;)

    We (at least us ops) can be the same way as this on #perl (EFNet), and we know it. But, the difference is that #perl isn't a helpdesk, but news groups generally are (just as PerlMonks is). It is easy to say RTFM to simple questions, found in FAQs. But, when asked at a helpdesk, a decent answer should be given. Surprisingly, not everyone knows how to use perldoc, or 'man', or how to clearly ask what they are looking for. We should, IMO, try to understand this when being 'helpers'. Anyways, just my $.02.

    Cheers,
    KM

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