Re: Kindness

[kilgallen@eisner.decus.org (Larry Kilgallen)]

In article <37CC6844.AB898EEE@rational.com>, Mark Lundquist <mark@rational.com> writes:
> I hate to see people get trashed on for asking an innocent question!
> 
> A while back, a guy posted to this group with a question about how to do
> something (or not do it) in Ada. One respondent, a respected expert in
> the Ada community, replied with a post that was pretty thoroughly
> contemptuous and condescending.

Absent a specific example, one cannot be certain.

One possible reason would be that the post appeared to be someone who
was attempting to do "homework via newsgroups".  This annoys two classes
of people:

	1) Instructors who expect students to do their own work

	2) Former students who did their own work back in the good old days

At least once in this group the instructor who noticed the post was
actually the instructor who had assigned that problem to that student.

> by this response.  Also, it was a great opportunity to point out some of
> the clear advantages of Ada, but it went to waste 'cause now that guy
> will probably go away thinking of Ada as the Language Of Buttheads.

There are some who do not want to attract to the Ada community those
who would pass someone else's work off as their own, or particularly
someone who would acquire academic credentials without really understanding
the material.  You would not want to end up maintaining something that
person had written.

But as I said, absent a specific example, one cannot be certain.
The case you are considering might have had no hint of being a
homework problem.

Larry Kilgallen