Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Mon, 29 Jan 2018 17:34:34 +0000, John Gordon wrote:

[...]
> The displayed filename in File Explorer was input.txt -- meaning that
> the real filename was actually input.txt.txt, because File Explorer
> shows file extensions as a separate column.
> 
> Without this screenshot, we would have had only the user's (incorrect)
> assertion that the file existed, and no way to diagnose the true issue.

No way to diagnose it -- apart from asking the programmer to run the DOS 
command `dir` in the directory and copy and paste the file listing.

Or os.listdir() in Python.


> Granted, this was an environment issue and not a code issue, but I can
> imagine situations where the same sort of thing could apply to code.

The only time a programmer MUST include a screen shot is when they are 
trying to diagnose a problem with graphical output that can't easily and 
accurately be described in words. And that's a screen shot of the 
*output*, not the code.

It MAY be useful to include a screen shot of system crashes where the 
error message is impossible to copy and too long and complex to 
transcribe.

Or possibly when trying to ask for help with your GUI IDE or editor, 
although even then most questions can be described in words.

So I don't quite rule out the possibility of programmers needing to take 
screen shots at all. I'm not a troglodyte :-)

But what I do rule out is the necessity and usefulness of programmers 
taking screen shots of their *code* to ask for help with program logic or 
solving errors (with the very rare possible exception of especially 
difficult to solve syntax errors).


-- 
Steve