From: "W. Kent Starr" <elderburn@...>
Date: 2001-04-24T14:20:16+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:14140] Re: From Guido, with love... [+ Jython

On Monday 23 April 2001 20:41, James Britt wrote:
> The Perl lists I'm familiar with show considerable tolerance for simple
> questions and newcomers,
> so long as the request was preceded by at least a modicum of research.  I
> also suspect that experienced
> Perl users may have grown tired of answering questions likely found in the
> copious Perl PODs and FAQs.

Well, there is certainly some justification in that; w/o the background of 
the very basics (developed from some reading of the docs/faqs and a bit of 
play with the language, any answers even when politely given may not be 
correctly understood.

> It is much harder to simply tell a new Ruby user to RTFM, as documentation
> is not as plentyful
> as for Perl.
>

This is a good point, although such things as the translation efforts being 
organized do certainly speak well, by example, of the Ruby 'community' as a 
whole IMO.

> There are, for now, far fewer Ruby experts and Ruby newcomers; there are
> fewer Ruby users than
> Python or Perl users.  As that changes, the number of  FAQ requests will
> increase, and the general
> tone of Ruby lists will be pretty much the same as Python/Perl lists.
>

Insofar as the reputed 'rudeness', I certainly hope not. And, this _is_ 
something we as a community can 'decide' _not_ to become.

OTOH we must guard against failing to be expressively due to some misguided 
concept of 'polite', 'netiquette' or the 'politically correct'. If someone 
persists in asking questions in such a way that you (we) do all the work for 
them, then, apart from it being a bother, we also do _them_ a disservice; 
they fail to learn an absorb. The total of our obligation is to put people 
upon the correct path towards their finding their own answers, with 
occassional 'peer review' and 'refactoring' along the way.

Just my  cents


Regards,

Kent Starr
elderburn@mindspring.com