On Fri, 2007-13-07 at 12:11 +1000, Donald Bruce Stewart wrote:
* Give tips on how to answer questions
Answering politely, and in detail, explaining common misunderstandings is better than one word replies.
I can give one added tip, though, that is an opposing force which has to
be balanced against this "in detail" meme. A pattern I see a lot in
computing, but especially in esoteric computing (which Haskell is,
still) is a newcomer asking a question and getting a response from the
community, as the result of continued conversation within it (and not
with said newcomer!), that looks astonishingly like this:
http://www.willamette.edu/~fruehr/haskell/evolution.html
While it is understandable, given the intense interest most grognards of
any language have in playing with the language, for people to enjoy
conversations that go into the ever-more-esoteric, it is decidedly not
helpful to the newcomer striving to understand things. So yes: Answer
politely. Explain your answer in detail suited to the perceived level
of the asker. Clear common misunderstandings. But do not use this as a
launchpad into the geek equivalent of language knowledge oneupmanship.
It confuses far more than it helps. If you really need to enter into
the game, branch out. Don't even reply to the thread but start a new
thread with your reply. Leave the newcomer to the comprehensible side,
even if it is perhaps somehow less than "perfect" by whatever standards
you choose to measure perfection in.
--
Michael T. Richter