Teaching python to non-programmers

[Chris Angelico]

On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 3:42 PM, Rustom Mody <rustompmody at gmail.com> wrote:
> People whose familiarity with religion is limited to the Judeo-Christian
> tradition are inclined to the view (usually implicit) that
> "being religious" == "belief in God"
> However there are religions where belief in God is irreligious -- Jainism
> And others where it is is irrelevant -- Tao, Shinto.
> [There is the story of a westerner who wen to a shinto temple and said:
> All this (rites) is fine and beautiful but what's your *philosophy*
> To which he was told: "Philosophy? We have no philosophy! We dance!"]

That's nothing to do with norms, though. The norm might be to follow
Taoism, but that doesn't make it more right - just more normal.

>> That's equivalent to being told "Don't ever delete any of your code,
>> just comment it out". I don't care who's saying that, it's bad advice.
>
> The correct analogy: "Dont ever delete content from the repository"

Generally, a repository won't let you truly delete anything, which is
exactly my point: you can delete lines of code from the current file
without losing anything. If you want to see the context, you go and
look at context, you don't need it to be right there in the current
file. Same with email - and often even easier, because your client
will let you simply scroll up and see what was said previously.

ChrisA