Newbie: finding the key/index of the min/max element

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

>>>>> "James" == James J Besemer <jb at cascade-sys.com> writes:

    James> It strikes me as somewhat arbitrary that "newbie" questions
    James> or comments about language features are so irritating while
    James> answering newbie questions over and over about how to split
    James> a text line into fields (or to measure performance) is not.

    James> IMHO, they both seem legitimate questions.

Note where you quoted "newbie", and where you didn't.  I think you
know the difference, although it may not be easy to articulate.

    James> I was initially misled by the unusually broad range of
    James> evidently legal topics on this list; the boundaries are
    James> entirely non obvious.  People like myself are perfectly
    James> capable of following rules that are clearly posted and duly
    James> established, as opposed to individual complaints that for
    James> all we know are merely one person's opinion.

My guess is that's a part of the "social experiment".  It's so cool
that one person can refer to James Buchanen _and_ Jamie Zawinski in
the same newsgroup.  I'd certainly like to explore the things people
of such varied interests are thinking about.  Evidently they want to,
too.

But that requires a lot of self-discipline, knowing when to terminate
the OT threads, or move them, to comply with the explicit topic.  And
it _does_ require cooperation and sensitivity to things that might be
just one person's opinion, or might be representative.  This is a lot
of effort, perhaps, but I think it's worth it.

And you _can_ treat c.l.py as just another newsgroup, restricting
yourself to polite technical Q&A about "how to do it in Python" or "is
there (likely to be) a convenient facility/idiom to do it in Python (I
haven't found it in the `usual places' if there is)".  No fear of
flames, minimal effort (for complying "wif da rulez"---you still have
to write good posts, which ain't easy).

What you can't do is generalize from "many things go" to "any thing
goes."  And you can expect to take some heat if you make no attempt to
apply judgement to what's acceptable, but just assume a fixed rule.

I'm not a charter member, so all of the above is IMHO.  But I bet I'll
be able to get along fairly well to the extent that I think in those
terms.


-- 
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences  http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
University of Tsukuba Tennodai 1-1-1                 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN