Apology [was: is this pythonic]

[Steven D'Aprano]

It has been suggested to me off-list that my 
response(s) to Bill Mill in the "is this pythonic" 
thread were rude and hostile.

If that is what people saw in my posts, then I 
apologise, because that wasn't my intention. In fact, 
my comments weren't especially even aimed at Bill -- 
they were intended as more general comments about 
finding a balance between dismissing questions by 
pointing to the Python references, and guiding the 
questioner to learn the skills to be able to use the 
references effectively. I know I'm not yet at that 
stage: I still hit road-blocks in knowing where to look 
at times, and I guess that made me over-sensitive.

In hindsight, it would have been better for me to have 
cut Bill's comments from my reply, and just make 
allusions to a nebulous "they" who sometimes have a 
tendency towards using "RTFM" as an answer to anything, 
because Bill's specific was less dismissive and more 
supportive than what you can get on many newsgroups. I 
agree with his basic sentiments, although I might not 
have worded it in precisely the same way.

(Given how I put my foot in it when I did reply, 
perhaps that's not a bad thing.)

My apologies to Bill specifically, and [shameless 
brown-nosing here] thank you to the comp.lang.python 
community, which as a whole is far more tolerent than 
many other forums I've been on.


-- 
Steven.