From: Nuralanur@...
Date: 2006-05-30T17:10:54+09:00
Subject: Re: Installation question

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Dear Matthew,

I realise that  people are trying to help, but I'd also like to  
suggest that unless  people are familiar with a platform, they hold  
back on giving advice  about it.

Trying to help was my intention and you're right that a MAC  OSX expert
could have given better advice. So I'll refrain from talking about Mac  OSX
from now, since there are experts available , which is a good thing  ;-)
I've been using a Mac at home and Linux in on a PC at work.
The reason for buying a Mac in the first place was that it claims
to be so simple. However, when I bought a new computer  four  years
later, it was not a Mac.
The reason for this was the fact that I could not get hold
of any usable reference or a competent seller to turn me really
productive on this platform.
I am using Linux in parallel to Cygwin on Windows. That latter
platform also sometimes has unexpected behaviour.
So just at the beginning of May, I ran into a problem that
seemed to be in relation with some extension library of Ruby
and I posted about it. The post was special enough to
reduce the amount of self-assessed experts to 0.
 
I did not get any response, and I was stuck for ten days.
 
Then, I produced some other error, got an advice, which didn't
fit 100 percent, either, but I learnt enough from it to solve the
problem.
So there is a danger from not getting good responses, but also
one from not getting any responses at all to a question one has.
Maybe a little critical distance from what other people tell you
can help to solve the problem.
 
Best regards,
 
Axel 
 
 
 


My  reasoning for this request is this: not-quite-right advice is   
actually a fair bit more dangerous than flat-out wrong advice for   
novice users (who are the kind of users who need and ask for  advice).

Wrong advice is obviously wrong, it gets tried and discarded  right away.

Not-quite-wrong advice costs people a lot of time and  effort before  
they realise that they've been led down the garden  path, or can lead  
people into some bad practices and  habits.

matthew smillie.



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