[EMAIL PROTECTED] said: >On Wed, 13 Nov 2002, at 5:08pm, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >> It is OFTEN easier in Python to try it than to guess. >> (Also, easier to try it than to RTFM... :) > > While I agree with you, it is with some trepidation. Learning a system >without learning the hows and whys behind it can lead to "cargo cult >programming", where the programmer does something completely unneeded (or >outright wrong), because he or she doesn't understand what he is *really* >doing.
I like that term. When I was in High School I tried to learn UCSD Pascal on the Apple ][. The compiler had a handy built in bugger. If your code was bug free, sometimes it would helpfully add a bug or 2. I got in the habit of recompiling if it didn't run. Thank goodness Turbo Pascal was so much quicker when I got to college. I eventually learned that a recompile didn't help :-) Many years later I learned about that quirk of Apple Pascal. I think that kind of thing (recompiling) would've been helped if I could've read a FAQ. Too bad we didn't have internet access back then. You'd think the magazines of the time would cover it when they ran an Apple Pascal piece. -- ------- Tom Buskey _______________________________________________ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
