FP MF Laser Printers - Dave in Port Orange

[Fairlight]

On Tue, Jan 10, 2017 at 04:32:19PM -0500, studio1--- via Filepro-list thus spoke:
> 
> Hi Wayne,
> 
> Thanks for the tip on the printer, I will add it to my notes.
> 
> I couldn?t believe the behavior of some of the people on the list. 

Oh, the people who expect competence from their 'peers'?  I know; how silly
of them...

> That?s why I never post anything?.. lol.

If this were the gamer community, you'd hear a very unsympathetic, "Git
gud," as someone else remarked about calling for the whaaaambulance.

You have -no- idea how tolerant some people are here, and how good you have
it.  I guarantee you that several of us are -still- pulling our punches
much of the time when we respond to ignorance and outright stupidity.

The PCL5 vs PCL6 issue is -ages- old, has been discussed ad nauseum in the
past (while said member was a member), and was a near-complete lack of
research and due diligence.  I'm loathe to do anything with printers, and
even I knew PCL6 != PCL5 in any way, shape, or form.  I was incapable of
finding a polite way to cite their ignorance, so I simply didn't respond on
that thread until this bit just now.

Today's divide-by-zero debacle is just...  There are no words.  Seriously.
I have to wonder how someone calls themselves a programmer when they don't
even sanity check against /0?  That's not even language-specific; it's
decent programming practise.  Heck, that's grade school -math-, nevermind
programming.  And again, I didn't respond on that thread, because there's
no polite way I can think of to tell someone they definitely should already
know certain things.

All of this is reducible to:

"Doctor, it hurts when I do this."

"Don't do that."

QED.

I don't think anyone minds fielding serious questions borne of avoidable or
unforeseeable issues.  I don't think anyone minds helping someone learn.  I
do think people lose patience with others who can't be arsed to do their
due diligence or educate themselves.

The reality is that this list has had 250-350 members since 1995 or so,
and it's generally been about 5-10% (depending on list membership at any
given time, roughly the same 15 or so people) of the list members who are
competent, helping the other 95% of the list members who tend not to be.
(That number has actually dropped sharply since Esak retired and Stockler
passed away, whilst several others retired or transitioned out of filePro
for other pastures.)  That's the best case scenario when things don't
devolve into a complete spiral of the blind leading the blind within the
95% group.  The irony is that the 95% have the temerity to complain about
-how- they got help and how it was phrased, rather than appreciate the fact
they got help at all, considering the 'quality' of what they put forth in
the first place.  You're relying on basically 5% of the members to guide it
back from GIGO to something remotely usable, and you want to complain about
-how- they do it?  Really??

IMNSHO, people need to learn that not everywhere is their "safe space", and
consider themselves fortunate that they're still able to get assistance
from some patient souls out there.  You think -this- is harsh?  Try your
luck in a place like comp.lang.perl.misc.  You'll post 99%+ usable code
with an obscure bug, and two dozen people will spend the next week debating
your code formatting habits, rather than addressing the actual functional
issues for which you brought forth the code into the public eye.  I've had
it happen, and I -do- know what I'm doing most of the time.  You're dealing
with teddy bears here, even amongst the harshest of us.  I've seen what
it's like elsewhere, in groups of...well...real programmers.  Many filePro
programmers are not 'real' programmers, don't know the underlying systems
for which they code, and often know no other language; such is the nature
of the 4GL beast.

The truth is, the people most likely to be critical and come off as harsh
are generally the people who know exactly what they're doing.  Those
are -exactly- the people everyone should be listening to.  By example,
as a sometimes musician, I can say that I have learned -far- more from
critical input than I ever have to someone nodding and smiling and telling
me everything was great, when it was actually a steaming pile of rubbish
which was poorly executed.  Almost everything I've learned has come from
'negative' input, whether it was phrased indelicately or nicely.  Seems to
me that people have forgotten (or never learned) how to learn from critical
input.  And yet, people keep trying to help.

People seriously don't know how good they have it.

mark->
-- 
Audio panton, cogito singularis.