Counsel bears (OT, Re: how fast is Python?)

[Peter Hansen]

Marc Wilson wrote:
> 
> In comp.lang.python,  Juha Autero <Juha.Autero at iki.fi> (Juha Autero) wrote
> in <mailman.1062240014.19619.python-list at python.org>::
> 
> |graham__fawcett at hotmail.com (Graham Fawcett) writes:
> |
> |> If we each had at least /one/ wise counsel bear, then c.l.py would
> |> certainly reap the benefits of our enhanced posts!
> |
> |That reminds me of a story I probably read from The Practice of
> |Programming by Brian W. Kernighan and Rob Pike. In some university
> |(I've forgotten the name) students doing programming exercises had to
> |explain their problem to a teddy bear before they could talk to course
> |staff. This was because often just explaining the problem helped you
> |to understand the problem and then you could fix it.
> 
> The term I coined for this is "echo debugging". :)

I once spent about two hours in a debugging session with a friend.
We were away from the computer, discussing the problem, with a 
whiteboard, diagrams, lots of talking....  after we found the 
solution I said something about wow, that's great, we solved it.

My friend said, "Peter... _I_ didn't even say anything!".  :-)

-Peter