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000101_icon-group-sender _Mon Oct 27 09:48:29 1997.msg
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From: gep2@computek.net
Date: Sat, 25 Oct 1997 16:31:57 -0500
Message-Id: <199710252131.QAA16388@ns1.cmpu.net>
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Subject: Re: tabulating values
To: icon-group@cs.arizona.edu
X-Mailer: SPRY Mail Version: 04.00.06.17
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Status: RO
>Date: Sat, 25 Oct 1997 15:58:18 +1000
To: gep2@computek.net
From: Stuart.Robinson@anu.edu.au (Stuart Robinson)
Subject: Re: tabulating values
>Please do not send me any more e-mail.
Okay, accordingly I am responding via the list.
>Your responses are generally not very helpful and in this case downright rude.
I'm sorry if my attempts to help haven't been helpful to you. Note that I *did*
write and provide you with an complete example program (and, before that, a
series of comments regarding the changes to widely available word count
programs) that would satisfy your needs. And I genuinely am not as a rule a
rude person, so I'm sorry if you took my comments that way.
> And for your information, these are not my homework assignments. They are my
attempts to learn a bit of Icon. I am new to programming and to Icon and
sometimes can't find what I'm looking for in the book.
I'm sorry if your problems looked to be "beginning programming 101" homework
assignments. I understand that you clearly are not an accomplished programmer.
But please understand that the reasons for my frustration with your approach to
learning is that to successfully learn *any* programming language requires the
ability and willingness to sit down with the book and STUDY how the language
works, and what elements of the given example programs do what. Just asking
people to supply you with a program that performs some trivial function is not
going to help, particularly since if you're not willing to study and understand
the MANY example programs in the Icon book, then you're probably not going to be
willing to study and understand the programs you're asking us here on the
newsgroup to write for you, either.
If you want to learn Icon, you need to STUDY THE BOOK and UNDERSTAND THE
EXAMPLES THERE. If you understand how the stuff in the book works, and why,
then you'll see that a lot of the questions you're posting here look pretty
silly.
If you are *completely* lost in even the first-level introductory material in
the book (which is the kind of stuff we're dealing with here) then there's
little point in trying to go for more advanced material before you understand
the basics.
> Since I have no local support, I use usenet. Isn't that's what it's for?
(Rhetorical Q, I don't want an answer.)
I would hope that even most beginning programmers are willing to devote at least
a smidgen of independent study and trying to understand the material in question
(and Icon has a LOT of introductory material available... including the book
"Icon Programming for Humanists" which is oriented towards linguists and other
liberal-arts types rather than just CompSci jocks) before they come to others
for "local support".
Back in my Intelec BBS programming group days, we had a couple of common
taglines, expressing related tongue-in-cheek thoughts:
"Why RTFM, when you can just post a message To: ALL ?"
"Why RTFM, when you can just call the shareware author at home?"
Again, if you are ever going to learn to program successfully (in Icon or indeed
almost any other programming language) it is going to require a modicum of
effort... especially at the beginning, when you're trying to grasp some of the
admittedly obtuse concepts you simply have to grasp before getting very far (and
hey, I know that I struggled too, back in college, to understand pointers and
linked lists and dynamic data structures and recursion and things like that).
If you are going to ever learn Icon, it's NOT going to be by us here on the Icon
discussion list leading you by the hand every single step of the way... you're
going to have to put in at least some independent effort, and the book is there
to support you for about 98% of that.
I'm sure that I and many of the other people here on the mailing list will be
happy to try to assist you if, after trying to grasp some concept or debug some
unfathomable problem, you really and truly need help to get you over that hump.
But up to now, the kinds of questions you're asking betray that you really
haven't put forth even a modicum of effort at studying and trying to understand
the material that IS available in the book for that purpose. And THAT is why
we're frustrated with your posts. If there is something in the book that REALLY
is unclear, after giving it significant effort, *then* ask us to explain the
*specific* part of it that you don't understand. Or, post the program YOU wrote
that you couldn't get to work, so we can show you where you might have gone
astray.
IT IS NORMAL TO FEEL LOST AND CONFUSED when you're first getting into computer
programming... there are a LOT of alien concepts you simply have to manage to
wrap your mind around. But you CAN succeed at doing that. You will probably
NOT succeed at achieving it, however, by just asking other people to write full
and completely working programs for you.
And especially not if you put as little effort into studying the programs WE
write for you as you apparently have into studying the examples in the book.
:-(
Gordon Peterson
http://www.computek.net/public/gep2/
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