Newbie: finding the key/index of the min/max element

[Mark McEahern]

[James J. Besemer]
> It strikes me as somewhat arbitrary that "newbie" questions or comments
> about language features are so irritating while answering newbie questions
> over and over about how to split a text line into fields (or to measure
> performance) is not.

Is it really that arbitrary?

Imagine me walking up to a [insert your favorite expert here] and:

1.  Telling them they ought to change how they do x.  Or that they way they
do x is wrong, inefficient, could be better, ought to be more like y.
2.  Asking them how to do x.

You really think it's arbitrary that 1 is irritating and annoying and 2 is
not?

Posting to comp.lang.python that the language ought to have block delimiters
is about as pointless--and graceless, really--I suppose, as posting to
comp.lang.perl that $_ ought not to do whatever the hell it is that it does.

// mark