Returning a value from code string

[Peter Hansen]

Fried Egg wrote:
>>From above:
> Seems like you are jumping through a lot of hoops for very little
> benefit.
> What am I missing?
> <END>
> 
> Why does anyone care about "why" people do things when they ask a
> specific technical question on a newsgroup?  Maybe op is risking his
> server (who cares) or maybe he is just trying to explore an idea
> (again, who cares).  It almost seems like bad etiquette, really.  It
> also seems somehow different than asking questions that elicit
> technical context.

To be blunt, you're wrong.  Though some of us have trouble posting 
"why?" responses that never sound rude, it is not only a good idea to 
understand why, it's *necessary*.  In fact, only by understanding why 
can one really understand the "technical context".  This is a basic 
tenet of good requirements engineering.

Among other good reasons to ask why, there are the following:

1. Experience in this newsgroup shows that a large percentage of people 
asking questions have a poor understanding of their own requirements, or 
are making the mistake of defining their problem in terms of a desired 
solution rather than merely specifying requirements and allowing the 
experts to choose the most appropriate solution.  An example of this is 
the frequent "How can I use package X to do such-and-such?" where the 
ultimate best answer turns out to be "don't use package X, you don't 
need it for what it turns out you're trying to do".  Yes, sometimes the 
OP specifically wanted to use X to solve the problem, to learn more 
about X, but then that's just when asking "why?" is most critical.  They 
usually don't tell us when that's the case, so we have to ask to be sure.

2. Because of different linguistic and cultural backgrounds in this 
international newsgroup, or the inherent ambiguities in human language, 
a poster sometimes misuses a word or phrase, or entirely misunderstands 
something he's read, and if we don't dig down to the "why?" we risk 
providing an answer which answers the letter of his question but 
entirely misses the spirit, and ultimately is a disservice.

3. People posting here have a wide range of experience, whether with 
Python, with programming, or with computers in general.  Sometimes it's 
not at all clear how experienced a poster is, and if a given answer 
doesn't take into account the possibility that the poster is such a 
rookie that he might be completely off the mark about how to do 
something, or even whether it's a good idea to do something, then that 
answer might be more harmful than helpful.

In the specific case in question, Kirk's first post gave little or no 
hint about how much he knew about security issues and, by asking "why?", 
with a single word Steven hoped to learn enough to say things like "oh, 
there's a package designed to do that which you can just plug in" or 
"oh, it's clear you are totally new to issues of network security and 
are about to put your foot right in it, so here's some background to 
save you from yourself", or whatever...

> Sorry to rant about etiquette.  I just have a problem similar to the
> original poster's, and it pissed me off when I wrote to the newsgroup
> asking "how do I do x,y,z?" and somebody writes back saying "you really
> shouldn't want to do x,y,z..." when they really haven't a clue.  This
> exchange has been a lot better than that, probably because of my poor
> explanation in my question.

Being pissed off when someone trying to help you responds in a manner 
you consider to be overstepping some unspoken bounds is really your 
problem, not that of the respondent, and you ought to learn to deal with 
it given, the anarchy that is Usenet.  While it's arguable whether 
bluntly asking "why?" violates some kind of "etiquette", it most 
definitely does *not* violate "netiquette", and actually follows it very 
closely.  IMHO.

YMMV, but ultimately it's your problem if you don't think people should 
ask why.  If it really concerns you, prepend your posts with "I believe 
I have good reasons for doing the things I'm doing here and kindly ask 
that potential respondents limit their responses to directly addressing 
the technical issues I raised and not asking "why?" I'm doing this. 
Thank you in advance."

If you were to do that, it would largely (but not entirely) eliminate 
that kind of reply, and would save some of us the trouble of reading the 
rest of your post.

-Peter