Teaching python to non-programmers
Rhodri James
rhodri at wildebst.org.uk
Thu Apr 10 18:40:22 EDT 2014
On Thu, 10 Apr 2014 21:52:53 +0100, <pete.bee.emm at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> Just awesome, not only do we have double line spacing and single line
>>
>> paragraphs, we've also got top posting, oh boy am I a happy bunny :)
>>
>> I'll leave someone3 else to explain, I just can't be bothered.
>>
>>
>
> Do you get paid to be a jerk, or is it just for yuks? If the latter,
> you're not funny.
It's called irony, and unfortunately Mark is reacting to an all-to-common
situation that GoogleGroups foists on unsuspecting posters like yourself.
It's the result of a fundamental clash of technological cultures; trying
to impose a pretty web interface on a protocol defined to use unformatted
plain text. It fails, inevitably, leaving us Usenet and
mailing-list-based readers annoyed at being given something unreadable to
deal with. Unsurprisingly, most of us don't bother, and won't have read
more than the first couple of words of your original post.
The wiki page https://wiki.python.org/moin/GoogleGroupsPython goes into
some detail of what the rest of us find annoying, and how to fix the
problems. I've left the double-spacing that you quoting Mark produced so
you can see that part of the problem -- if you want to understand why it
is so hated, imagine that done to a screenful of Python script, then
quoted by a few more people on GG, until you're only getting half a dozen
lines of code (or text) on the screen. That sort of thing is hard work to
read, and not many bother, and yes, it really does happen.
Top posting is generally poor netiquette, thank you for not doing it this
time. Unfortunately you fell into another trap GG lays for you by not
handling attributions properly. Or at all this time. I happen to
remember that you were replying to Mark Lawrence (just in case it was
impossible for me to guess from the subject matter :-), but if I hadn't
remembered that, I wouldn't have known from the context without going and
searching. Again, that's work many people won't bother putting in, making
your post less likely to be read.
Sorry your post was the straw to break the camel's back this week, but it
is a complete pain to the rest of us. I have more than once considered
getting my reader to automatically discard anything with
"@googlegroups.com" in the message ID just to reduce the aggravation.
--
Rhodri James *-* Wildebeest Herder to the Masses
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