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

[James J. Besemer]

Alex Martelli wrote:

> Actually, _I_ wouldn't mind it if there was a way to discourage people
> from starting Yet Another Round of language-change proposals or whines
> and complaints against some aspect of the language they have not
> carefully considered.

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

For the record, I did not initiate any of these language extension topics.
I only joined in after someone else put them into play.

> But
> I just hope I'll be in one of my time-management-necessitated
> periods of abstinence from this group next time some newbie
> arrogantly and querulously teaches us why Python should have
> [a] explicit block delimiters, [b] join as a method of all the
> possible sequences and not of joiner-objects, [c] hygienic
> macros, [d] booleans -- oops forget I mentioned the latter, since
> they're now BDFL-blessed cruf^H^H^H^H brilliant innovations...:-).

A traditional solution for this would be for someone to write and maintain a
FAQ for the list.  By tradition, list FAQs can prominently feature a list of
arbitrary topics that are strictly off limits.  New members can be pointed
to the FAQ and people who willfully disregard the FAQ can be dealt with.

Otherwise, it's generally impossible for newcomers to know that a particular
topic is taboo or has been previously beaten to death.  A smart guy like
probably should have been able to guess but I was initially misled by the
unusually broad range of evidently legal topics on this list; the boundaries
are entirely non obvious.  People like myself are perfectly capable of
following rules that are clearly posted and duly established, as opposed to
individual complaints that for all we know are merely one person's opinion.

Of course the FAQ itself would have to be vetted by the group, so it truly
represents a consensus.  A good FAQ is a non-trivial amount of work.  Any
volunteers?

Finally, there's the issue of once taboo topics that become language
features.  If "bool" had been listed as a taboo topic perhaps the
corresponding PEP would never have been written (for better or worse,
depending on your viewpoint).  But collisions such as this probably doesn't
happen frequently enough to be a concern.

Regards

--jb

--
James J. Besemer  503-280-0838 voice
http://cascade-sys.com  503-280-0375 fax
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