I know when I ask a question, if there is an easy answer in the docs I would rather just be pointed to the Primary Document than to have somebody waste their time holding my hand.
Paris Sinclair | 4a75737420416e6f74686572
pariss@efn.org | 205065726c204861636b6572
I wear my Geek Code on my finger.
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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
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Yes, I wasn't talking about the cases where you read the document and didn't understand it. That certainly was not what I was trying to express, I am sorry if it came across that way. I was talking about the case where the person asking the question hasn't TRIED to look it up and understand it, or didn't know there was a tutorial/FAQ on it. In these cases, being pointed to the source is probably going to be more helpful to their development as a programmer, than leading them over the mountain without teaching them the skills needed to find a pass on their own.
Paris Sinclair | 4a75737420416e6f74686572
pariss@efn.org | 205065726c204861636b6572
I wear my Geek Code on my finger.
| [reply] |
