There are degrees. At my stage in Perl knowlege, I will get a lot more from a quick answer because I can understand various thing surrounding the issue I need an immediate solution/answer for. I don't think I have come across too many newbies (or any) who can get a quick answer and actually learn from it, without asking 10 other questions. This is why learning to read the docs (et al) are useful for this skill level because they can find the answers to their questions, and side-knowlege along the way. It will also help them learn to learn for those times when they do not have three other programmers around them to ask questions to. I'm saying that sometimes you learn better by getting a quick solution to your immediate problem than you do by getting a reference to The Whole Picture(tm) in the form of a dense man page when you're not ready for it.

Which do you think would help someone learn better if they ask the simple "how to I remove whitespace from a string?". By you showing them the regex so they can cut/paste it? Or by being refered to perlre and the FAQ (of which that is a question in)? I believe the later is a more effective way. It will take longer to grasp a concept by trying to learn by sound bits and specific snippets (like the regex only). The knowlege one would take from reading perlre to find their answer would in turn answer future questions.

I am not sure what dense man page you are talking about. Most of the Perl documentation is quite verbose and well explained (with some exceptions). And, when do you propose someone is ready to learn from the documentation of the product they are using? After a year? After asking every FAQ question to cow-orkers and people on the internet?

Personally, I learned Perl from reading the documentation and learning how other peoples scripts worked (and didn't work). No classes, no mono-a-mano.

Knowledge doesn't expand 100% to new areas all at once. It slowly grows and deepens by internalizing what you read and do. When you have the personal experience of doing something you are so much more prepared to understand the theoretical base of that "something".

Yes, so someone needs to read and do to learn.. not ask for 'the answer'. This whole discussion came about from wondering about simple questions from newbies, not about needing quick solutions to complex problems. If people are spoon fed answers from early on, they may not learn the tools needed to fend for themselves.

Cheers,
KM

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