Quote:
Originally Posted by hawhill
Please consider that nothing in this thread was probably meant destructive. I clearly read everything that way. OTOH, don't expect everything to be constructive. You cannot really hold a discussion with the premise that everything has to be constructive (there are sometimes reasons to call certain ways wrong, which should be allowed to be discussed too). Discussion behaviour is quite different among people. Some people that you would call harsh or pressing might actually be just to shy or to polite (different cultures!) to say too much at first, but might offer valuable points if one just asks "well, why do you think that?" in return.
Geekmaster, you're also writing exceptionally long posts. While they do certainly hold their share of information, please consider that the length alone will increase the probability to get worn into side issues or to be misunderstood. Nothing wrong with the length, not at all, but be prepared to be misunderstood sometimes. We all should be.
I'm sorry I interrupted this thread with this metadiscussion, but I have a strong feeling that we have some terrible misunderstandings of each other's intents going on here. It would be sad to let that ruin fruitful conversation. I really like the "developer's corner" hangout, one reason for that being the vast heterogeny of people contributing here.
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Thanks for the suggestions.
Regarding "
sometimes reasons to call certain ways wrong", I agree that it is fine to call a way "wrong" if a "right" way is recommended to replace it, or at least that is should be worded in a way to not cause anger. But just calling something "wrong" with no details about why you think it is wrong, and no suggestions about how to improve it (i.e. "aggressive listening") causes anger in many people (not just me):
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?AggressiveListening
Here is a quote from that URL: [
What Aggressive Listeners don't seem to understand is that their "challenging questions" have underlying meanings of "you are lying to me" or "you are incompetent".].
Sadly, what irks me most is the 
icon knc1 used, now super-glued to his identity in my mind.
Regarding the "
exceptionally long posts", there is a famous quote "
if i had more time i would have written a shorter letter", frequently attributed to Cicero, Blaise Pascal, Mark Twain, and others. It takes me multiple revisions to condense my posts down to contain the same (or more) useful content in a smaller space. My source code does this too -- I often add features by removing limitations, with the side-effect of smaller code as it gets refactored through mutliple revisions.
I find that the process of polishing a rough draft into a completed manuscript first makes it grow, then usually condenses the word content by a factor of 16, while retaining all of the important information content. I have studied the "Reader's Digest" rules for text condensation, and I try to apply them during the final stages, but that is not particularly useful for ephemoral (short-lived) content such these posts.
