jstnms...@gmail.com wrote: > I write this to address the criticism which targets a user's lack of > responsibility for the real/implied/insinuated failings of the docs. As a > relatively inexperienced student of programming, I am not in any position > to contribute/edit the documents. THAT DOES NOT, however, DENY THE > CATEGORICAL STUPIDITY OF THE DOCUMENTATION: . Not only are the semantics > of the editors in question, but so are the syntactical and grammatical > conventions, too. Semantics, even in the hands of the honest, is a fuzzy > beast; the elements of exposition and structure are not. Perhaps the > inquisitive mind is correctly labeled stupid, or irresponsible, if it > cannot decipher some fine piece of programming crypsis. And perhaps not. > It can just as perhaps be that there is an equal, even greater > irresponsibility, on the part of those who have taken up the task of > clarifying the obscure to the confused. There is no greater arrogance, > and it seems to me particularly prevalent among the educators in the > technical fields, than pretending any hermeneutic, an effective > hermeneutic. Sadly, most of these creatures cannot tell a verb from a > noun, and scarcely know where modifiers are best, most effectively, posted > to qualify their objects, let alone use those same nouns and verbs and > modifiers to explain the intricacies of a subject. Tell one of these > cognoscenti that language is about COMMUNICATION, and they begin pointing > abstract fingers at their critics, and labeling. > > Perhaps the reason programs are so inelegant, and so user-UNfriendly, and > so bug-infested, is a natural consequence, when a field is dominated by > creatures who know much more than they comprehend, and much less than they > need to? If, I think, you cannot explain a thing to me, you do not > understand it. After all, I'm a lot smarter than you, and I have > thankfully learned make out a fool however obscurely he covers himself.
I take my hat off to you, sir or madam, that is a brilliant satire of pretentious self-important impenetrable prose complaining about the lack of readability of another text. Although I found that the occasional grammatical errors (such as the missing "how to" from the last sentence), which I assume are deliberate, were a bit heavy handed and more distracting than ironic. Nevertheless, a masterful job. You made me laugh. -- Steven -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list