Why not just show the out-of-range index?

[rurpy at yahoo.com]

Russ wrote:
> Folks,
>
> I'm truly sorry that so many feathers got ruffled in this thread. Let's
> see if I can put this thing to rest gracefully.

I too am tired of this and I apologize to you
(Russ) for jumping into it and for this (hopefullly
last) followup.  But the same thing happened here
a short time ago and in that incident too, someone
who made a suggestion was attacked and charged
unjustifiably with rudeness.

In neither that case nor this did anyone protest
the unjustness and hypocrisy that was blatant.
So this time I could not sit idly and watch.

To summarize the "insults" subtread (for closure)

An observation was made about a suboptimal error
message and a suggestion about how to improve it
made in good faith.  (Even harebrained suggestions
deserve a non-insulting explanation of why they're
not a good idea, and this was not harebrained.)

This resulted in a suggestion to "submit a patch".

The response was (correctly) that it was not
a viable suggestion.  (characterized by "silly"
hardly a strong epithet on usenet), that it would
be "trivial" to fix and should "take 2 minutes" by
someone with the requisite experience (obviously
an opinion, not a claim, since the OP said in
the same post that he was unfamiliar with Python
internals).

Obviously it takes more than two minutes.  This
was a usenet post for god's sake, not a PhD
dissertation.  And "trivial" is used almost as slang
by many computer and science types and means
"very easy" (as if you didn't know).

o it is reasonable to question the description
  "trivial" and ask what actually would need
  to be done. It is not reasonable to be
  insulted by it.
o Anyone who honestly interprets "two minutes"
  as 120 seconds should seek clinical help.
  A reasonable reading if this is that "it would
  take someone who works on Python internals
  regularly orders of magnitude less time than
  me, and with a higher probability of getting
  it right."  Sorry folks. that is a factually
  true statement.  Nothing to do with your time
  is less valuable than mine.  More imaginary
  insults.

The OP was blameless in this thread and this
was another case the regulars here overreacting
to imagined (or deliberately misinterpreted)
"insults" that were not there.

One can speculate that this serves a purpose
of suppressing interference from "outsiders"
in the development process.  Or maybe it is
just the alpha dogs asserting their authority.
Either way, it should not be allowed to pass 
uncriticised.