sorting ascending/descending with operator.attrgetter

[Patrick Maupin]

On Mar 31, 11:28 pm, Steven D'Aprano
<ste... at REMOVE.THIS.cybersource.com.au> wrote:

> I wouldn't so much say "literal" as "precise".

Being precise in your own words is an admirable trait.  Asking others
to be more precise can be done politely when necessary, but in this
case it obviously wasn't necessary, since even you, who deliberately
misinterpret everything I write, knew that I was really talking about
lists.

> If you think I'm pedantic, you should see some of the guys I work with.

I can well imagine that everybody who has to work with you thoroughly
enjoys proving you wrong as often as possible.  I would expect they
are probably much gentler to each other in your absence.  OTOH, if I
am wrong, I certainly wouldn't last long there -- I've left less
poisonous workplaces for less cause.

> I'm frequently on the receiving end of technical corrections. Yes, it's
> annoying to be in full flow explaining something, only to have somebody
> point out that you've made a silly mistake, or totally got something
> wrong, or what you've been calling a NAT device (including to the client)
> for a week is actually a NAS device *cough*. Annoying or not, if somebody
> had corrected me earlier, I wouldn't have looked quite so ignorant for
> quite so long, so all things considered I'd prefer to have my mistakes
> pointed out so I can stop making them.

There is a (not very subtle) difference between saying "Oh, you meant
a list, not a string" (especially when the context was a discussion of
list processing), and printing a traceback for something that nobody
was discussing, based on a single word slip.

> > It's a geek thing.
>
> Heavens, geeks on a programming forum! Who could possibly have expected
> such a thing?

Mr. Holden was being unfailingly polite, in trying to point out that
many individuals who have a reasonably high intellect, yet zero social
skills, will gravitate toward technical fields.  When he was asking
you to admit that you "tend toward the literal" (which naturally you
refused to do) I think he may have been trying to gently explain that
introspection is not just for Python anymore.

Regards,
Pat