On Tue, Jul 9, 2013 at 3:19 PM, Greg Keogh <[email protected]> wrote: > I was discussing "reading the manuals" with some friends recently when I > showed them some books I had kept from the 70s and 80s. Some of them got > into IT by doodling with Turbo Pascal and making some stuff without reading > any manuals, then they got the programming bug and ran with it, as I did > earlier with punch cards! > >
Punch cards are very unforgiving of 'try it and see' - I did some marked card programming back in high-school, where you'd write your program on cards, send them off somewhere, and get a 24" printout with a terse error back the following week. Ugh! > Unlike my friends, I tended to want to read the docs first before diving > in and bumbling around. I like to go in prepared and as a result I'm an > inveterate manual reader even these days. Some people prefer to futz and > learn that way. People seem quite divided on this. > > I'd like to try parachuting, but rather than just throw a parachute on and > jump out of plane to see how it goes, I'd like to read the manual first. > If at first you don't succeed, then skydiving probably^H isn't for you. > > Greg > -- Meski http://courteous.ly/aAOZcv "Going to Starbucks for coffee is like going to prison for sex. Sure, you'll get it, but it's going to be rough" - Adam Hills
