On Sat, Dec 04, 2010 at 04:10:36PM +0100, demerphq wrote: > > I don't buy that. Lots and lots and lots of programmers, including > well known ones, started off by typing example programs into their > computers.
That's one thing. The other thing is to copy-and-paste some code fragment from documentation, slice it into your boilerplate, expect it to work, and complain if it doesn't. By all means, I'm not expecting anyone to ignore the documentation. Copy-and-paste all you want. Just realize you aren't copying entire programs; whatever fragment you copy will interfere with the rest of the program. Note that just putting 'my' everywhere doesn't solve the copy-and-paste problem. Naively copying such fragments will create variables whose scope is too limited - and you'll have another set of newbies complaining their program doesn't work. Blindly copying fragments into your program without thought is as likely to create a good working program as expecting to be a good driver after watching some Formula 1 or NASCAR events, and copying the drivers. Abigail
