[H-GEN] Which is better?

[Greg Black]

On 2004-04-26, Matthew Sellers wrote:

> Gregs answer was a deflection. While I am not disputing that his point is
> correct, the answer was not very useful.

That depends on the student.  I never had the misfortune to
study CS at university, but I did have to learn it.  While I was
learning, I too asked a similar question.  The person I asked
gave me a similar answer to the one I gave here.  I found that
answer most enlightening.  I never assume that people who ask
questions are much more stupid than I am, so I tend to think
that answers that I have found helpful at a similar stage of my
learning might be helpful to others.

> Something that I believe in strongly is that when a student asks a question, it
> is THAT question that should be answered.

That depends on the circumstances.  If I were his teacher at the
university, then I would agree -- although I would still want to
make the point I made, as it's still the real answer.

But when somebody, student or not, asks a question on a mailing
list, the rules are quite different.  Nobody on the list is
*owed* the answer they want.  It's entirely up to those who
offer to spend some of their time providing free guidance to
decide how they will do it.  If you (meaning any list user) are
not happy with an answer, then you can ignore it and wait until
you either get an answer that you like or you run out of
patience.

> Why do first years get fixated by efficiency? Because their lecturers
> often ignore it entirely due to it's relative unimportance. This omission calls
> attention to it as it is something that many assume is central to programming.

I don't know how true this is, but it seems a bit unlikely to
me.

I do know that I wish that lots of modern programmers did care a
whole lot more about efficiency.  I just started OpenOffice on a
Celeron-2200 with 1 GB of memory and it took over 10 seconds
before it was ready to allow me to start to interact with it.
That is absurd and those programmers really should have spent
some time to make it respond in a reasonable amount of time.  It
seems as though people care in first year, but lose all interest
by the time they get to work.

Cheers, Greg
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