TypeError: can only concatenate str (not "int") to str

[avi.e.gross at gmail.com]

Alan,

Good tack. By not welcoming someone who is paranoid about being welcomed you
are clearly the right kind of welcoming!

Kidding aside, you have a point about one of the barrage of messages
probably not getting a great answer on your tutor forum. It is the MANY
messages often about fairly simple aspects of python, taken together, that
lead to the conclusion that this person is fairly new to python and still
thinking about things from a lifetime of experience using other languages.

I will say that at this point, it does not matter where they post as I
cannot imagine anyone having to pay them $1,000/hour for the privilege of
trying to tutor them.

There are topics raised that can be informative and lead to good discussions
amicably and as far as I can tell, many agree it would be nice if some
"error" messages provided more detail and perhaps some eventually will. But
as has been pointed out, these messages are only a small part of the python
environment and lots of other tools are typically used to debug that do
allow access to all kinds of details at breakpoints. 

I think many would be satisfied with some of the answers provided here and
note, FEW OR NONE OF US here (or am I wrong) are necessarily in a position
to make changes like this to the current or next versions of python. We are
all users who take what we get and work with it or look for a way around
things. The example used did not strike me as hard to figure out which of
X/Y was an int/str and what their values were. More time is wasted demanding
and debating a feature that is not there rather than solving the problem in
other ways.

In the interest of civility, I find removing myself sometimes works well. We
are volunteers and I don't need to volunteer to help any particular person
who does not seem to appreciate it. And if a forum fills up with nonsense so
the signal is hard to find amid the noise, why bother contributing?

Avi

-----Original Message-----
From: Python-list <python-list-bounces+avi.e.gross=gmail.com at python.org> On
Behalf Of Alan Gauld
Sent: Sunday, February 26, 2023 4:15 AM
To: python-list at python.org
Subject: Re: TypeError: can only concatenate str (not "int") to str

On 26/02/2023 00:54, Greg Ewing via Python-list wrote:
> On 26/02/23 10:53 am, Paul Rubin wrote:
>> I'm not on either list but the purpose of the tutor list is to shunt 
>> beginner questions away from the main list.

I'm not sure that's why we set it up but it is certainly a large part of our
remit. But protecting newbies from overly complex responses and covering
wider topics (beyond pure Pyhon) is also a large part of our purpose.

> There's a fundamental problem with tutor lists. They rely on 
> experienced people, the ones capable of answering the questions, to go 
> out of their way to read the tutor list -- something that is not of 
> personal benefit to them.

In practice, the "tutors" tend to be split between folks who inhabit both
lists and those who only interact on the tutor list. eg. I lurk here and
only occasionally partake.

But the problem with this particular thread is that, if directed to the
tutor list, the OP would simply be told that "that's the way Python works".
The tutor list is not for discussing language enhancements etc. It is purely
about answering questions on how to use the language (and standard library)
as it exists.
(We also cover beginner questions about programming in general.)

So this thread is most definitely in the right place IMHO.

--
Alan G
Tutor list moderator


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