subject:"Teaching python to non\-programmers"

On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 3:42 PM, Rustom Mody rustompm...@gmail.com wrote:
 People whose familiarity with religion is limited to the Judeo-Christian
 tradition are inclined to the view (usually implicit) that
 being religious == belief in God
 However there are religions where belief in God is irreligious -- Jainism
 And others where it is is irrelevant -- Tao, Shinto.
 [There is the story of a westerner who wen to a shinto temple and said:
 All this (rites) is fine and beautiful but what's your *philosophy*
 To which he was told: Philosophy? We have no philosophy! We dance!]

That's nothing to do with norms, though. The norm might be to follow
Taoism, but that doesn't make it more right - just more normal.

 That's equivalent to being told Don't ever delete any of your code,
 just comment it out. I don't care who's saying that, it's bad advice.

 The correct analogy: Dont ever delete content from the repository

Generally, a repository won't let you truly delete anything, which is
exactly my point: you can delete lines of code from the current file
without losing anything. If you want to see the context, you go and
look at context, you don't need it to be right there in the current
file. Same with email - and often even easier, because your client
will let you simply scroll up and see what was said previously.

ChrisA
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Re: Teaching python to non-programmers

On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 3:54 PM, Rustom Mody rustompm...@gmail.com wrote:
 Just to make it clear:
 1. I have no objection to the python list culture.
   As I said I tend to follow it in places where it is not the norm and get
   chided for it
   [For the record on other groups which are exclusively GG/gmail based Ive 
 been
   told that because I am geek/nerd I do it in a strange way]
 2. Nor to people getting irritated with others not following it and telling
them off

 What I am pointing out is that if one gets so besotted with irritation as to
 lose coherence, its unlikely that any useful communication will ensue.

Then be the geek/nerd. Do something more useful. See how many people
start finding that it's actually the better way.

ChrisA
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Re: Teaching python to non-programmers

On Fri, 11 Apr 2014 13:59:00 +1000, Chris Angelico wrote:

 I have seen plenty of cultures where people are unaware of the value of
 interleaved/bottom posting, but so far, not one where anyone has
 actually required it. Not one. 

I've been in plenty of mailing list forums where interleaved posting was 
required, but there's only so many times you can tell people off for 
being rude before you start coming across as rude yourself.

It's one of those nasty aspects of human psychology: the guy who casually 
and without malice tosses litter out of his car window, spoiling things 
for everyone, is somehow considered less obnoxious than the person who 
tells him off. Except in Switzerland, where if you leave your rubbish bin 
out more than twenty minutes after its been emptied, the neighbours 
consider it perfectly acceptable to tell you off, never mind that you've 
been at work. And heaven help you if you take your discarded Christmas 
tree down to the street too early.


 Norm here just means the thing people
 are too lazy to not do. That's not a reason for anyone else doing it.

I'm not sure what you are talking about. As far as I am concerned, the 
norm here absolutely is interleaved posting. Nearly all of the regular 
posters use it, have have done so for the decade or so I've been here. 
Interleaved posting requires more, not less, work -- that's one of the 
appeals of top-posting: it makes it easy to avoid editing your post for 
sense and readability, you can just bang on the keyboard and fire off 
whatever your first thoughts were, never mind actually answering the 
questions you were asked.


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Re: Teaching python to non-programmers

On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 5:09 PM, Steven D'Aprano
steve+comp.lang.pyt...@pearwood.info wrote:
 On Fri, 11 Apr 2014 13:59:00 +1000, Chris Angelico wrote:

 I have seen plenty of cultures where people are unaware of the value of
 interleaved/bottom posting, but so far, not one where anyone has
 actually required it. Not one.

 I've been in plenty of mailing list forums where interleaved posting was
 required, but there's only so many times you can tell people off for
 being rude before you start coming across as rude yourself.

Oops, I worded that badly. What I meant was not one where anyone has
actually required top-posting. There are places where bottom-posting
is expected/required, there are places where nobody cares enough to
complain, but I've yet to meet any where bottom posting is actually
forbidden.

 Norm here just means the thing people
 are too lazy to not do. That's not a reason for anyone else doing it.

 I'm not sure what you are talking about. As far as I am concerned, the
 norm here absolutely is interleaved posting. Nearly all of the regular
 posters use it, have have done so for the decade or so I've been here.
 Interleaved posting requires more, not less, work -- that's one of the
 appeals of top-posting: it makes it easy to avoid editing your post for
 sense and readability, you can just bang on the keyboard and fire off
 whatever your first thoughts were, never mind actually answering the
 questions you were asked.

Right, and I'm glad that the norm here happens to be the better
option. But the reason for advocating it is not everyone else does
it, but it's the better way.

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Re: Teaching python to non-programmers

On Thu, 10 Apr 2014 21:37:22 -0700, Rustom Mody wrote:

 Right. Its true that when I was at a fairly large corporate, I was not
 told: Please always top post!

That's only because they are ignorant of the terminology of top- bottom- 
and interleaved posting. If they knew the term, they would say it.


 What I was very gently and super politely told was: Please dont delete
 mail context

And your answer was, I'm not. All the context required to establish 
meaning is there. Correct?

Or perhaps you said, When you send a letter via paper mail, replying to 
someone's enquiry, do you photocopy their letter and staple it to the 
back of your response? And when they reply, to they photocopy YOUR 
response, *including the photocopy of their letter*, and sent it back? Of 
course you don't. That would be *idiotic*. It's no less idiotic when the 
effort of photocopying the letter is reduced to hitting Reply in Outlook.

Standard business handling of email truly is foolish. People only get 
away with it because, for the most part, *they stop reading* as soon as 
they hit the end of the top-posted reply (and their reading comprehension 
of that is generally lousy, but that's another story) and don't even 
notice that there are 15 pages of quoted-quoted-quoted-quoted-quoted-
quoted copies of their own words attached, complete with 10 copies of 
their (legally meaningless) disclaimer.

All this redundancy does nothing for improved communication, and it has 
real costs: emails are bigger than they need be, searching archives for 
information is harder, and if you're ever involved in a legal dispute, 
instead of paying your lawyer to review six pages of correspondence 
you're paying her to review sixty pages with the same semantic content. 
Top-posting is a classic example of the victory of short term gain 
(immediately save two seconds and a microscopic amount of effort when 
replying to an email) versus long term cost.


 Now when a mail goes round between 5 persons and what is addressed at
 one point is not the immediate previous mail, bottom-posting without
 pruning is as meaningless as top posting.

Ha. In my experience, anything not addressed immediately in corporate 
email is *never addressed again*, not until the original poster starts a 
new email to try to get an answer.


 As in religion or any cultural matter, its fine to stand up for and even
 vociferously uphold one's 'own' whatever that may be.
 
 What is unhelpful is
 - to suggest that my norms are universal norms. IOW there is a
 fundamental difference between natural and human-made laws
 - to lose track of statistics, in this case the population-densities of
 USENET vs other internet-kiddie cultures


I don't know that there is anyone here that thinks interleaved posting is 
the norm among the majority of email users. Nor is anyone saying that 
Usenet posters make up a majority of internet users. What we are saying 
is that *interleaved posting is objectively better* for most forms of 
email or news communication (although it is not a panacea), and 
especially for *technical discussions* like those that occur here.



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Re: Teaching python to non-programmers

On Thu, 10 Apr 2014 23:39:24 -0600, Ian Kelly wrote:

 On Thu, Apr 10, 2014 at 11:11 PM, Chris Angelico ros...@gmail.com
 wrote:
[...]
 Then you were told that by someone who does not understand email.
 That's equivalent to being told Don't ever delete any of your code,
 just comment it out. I don't care who's saying that, it's bad advice.
 
 That depends on what the mail is being used for.  For instance there's a
 difference between mail-as-dialogue and mail-as-business-process. In the
 former it is normal, even polite, to prune as the topic evolves and past
 quotations become less relevant.

Exactly.


 In the latter it seems more common for
 the entire thread to be preserved as a sort of chain of custody --

I think this is a rationalisation after the fact, and does not reflect 
actual practice with email.


 this way the next person who needs to see the email thread has full
 context as to what needs to happen and where the request is coming from.

I think this is wrong. First of all, quite often the newcomer doesn't 
need or want to see the full *history*. They need to know the *current* 
situation -- customer X wants to order 50,000 widgets *now*, the fact 
that seven emails ago they were asking for a quote on 20,000 gadgets is 
irrelevant.

Secondly, as soon as you have three or more people actively taking part 
is a conversation by email, no single email contains the entire history. 
So you still have to point the newcomer at some archive where they can 
see all the emails.

Thirdly, even when it is useful to read the entire history, it is far 
more understandable and efficient to read it in the order that it was 
written, not in reverse order.

I think that the habit of including the entire email history is just a 
side-effect of the typical corporate laziness and selfishness 
masquerading as efficiency. Rather than take five minutes of my time to 
bring somebody up to speed with a summary telling them exactly what they 
need to know and nothing but what they need to know, I spend two seconds 
dumping the entire file in their lap. That's much more efficient! Except 
that the newcomer then has to spend twenty minutes or an hour and may end 
up misunderstanding the situation. But that's *his* fault, not mine -- my 
butt is covered.

(You'll notice that nobody ever does this kind of info-dump on high-
ranking executives. *Then* they take the time to write an executive 
summary.)

It is, in a way, the corporate equivalent of RTFM, only enshrined as 
normal practice rather than seen as a deliberate put-down of somebody who 
hasn't done their homework. And because it's normal practice, even those 
who know better end up going along with the flow, because its easier than 
explaining to their supervisor why their emails are so confusing. And 
thus the world is made a slightly darker place.


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Re: Teaching python to non-programmers

On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 8:07 PM, Steven D'Aprano
steve+comp.lang.pyt...@pearwood.info wrote:
 It is, in a way, the corporate equivalent of RTFM, only enshrined as
 normal practice rather than seen as a deliberate put-down of somebody who
 hasn't done their homework. And because it's normal practice, even those
 who know better end up going along with the flow, because its easier than
 explaining to their supervisor why their emails are so confusing. And
 thus the world is made a slightly darker place.

It's even worse. If someone comes to you saying So what's this
Heartbleed thing?, RTFM would be providing a link to
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heartbleed but the default corporate
practice is linking to
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Heartbleedaction=history
and expecting the someone to read it all. But yes.

ChrisA
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Re: Teaching python to non-programmers

2014-04-11 Thread alister

On Fri, 11 Apr 2014 06:34:46 +0100, Paul Rudin wrote:
 
 It's not necessarily a bad idea to retain context in corporate emails.
 Messages tend to get forwarded to people other than the original
 recipient(s), and the context can be very helpful.
 
Right up to the point when someone forwards on an internal email chain to 
an external customer without bothering to prune out the bit where someone 
(usually an engineer like myself) has stated (bluntly) that what the 
salesman is proposing will never work*.

the longer the chain the more likely it is for something like that to be 
missed by the sender who wont have bothered to read everything (for some 
reason the recipient always finds the embarrassing statements).
 
*Or some other commercially sensitive  even more damming piece of 
information.


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Re: Teaching python to non-programmers

On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 8:46 PM, alister
alister.nospam.w...@ntlworld.com wrote:
 Right up to the point when someone forwards on an internal email chain to
 an external customer without bothering to prune out the bit where someone
 (usually an engineer like myself) has stated (bluntly) that what the
 salesman is proposing will never work*.

 the longer the chain the more likely it is for something like that to be
 missed by the sender who wont have bothered to read everything (for some
 reason the recipient always finds the embarrassing statements).

 *Or some other commercially sensitive  even more damming piece of
 information.

According to Snopes, that has happened in an email variant of the old
send this guy the standard cockroach letter story (which is itself
plausible and not provably false):

http://www.snopes.com/business/consumer/bedbug.asp

ChrisA
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Re: Teaching python to non-programmers

On Thu, 10 Apr 2014 22:42:14 -0700, Rustom Mody wrote:

 In middle-eastern society women are expected to dress heavier than in
 the West. A few years ago a girl went to school in France with a scarf
 and she was penalized.

Citation please. I think this is bogus, although given how obnoxious some 
schools can be I'm not quite prepared to rule it out altogether. I think 
it's far more likely that she was only penalized for wearing full head-
covering (not just a scarf) after being warned that it was not part of 
the school uniform and therefore not appropriate.


[...]
 People whose familiarity with religion is limited to the Judeo-Christian
 tradition are inclined to the view (usually implicit) that being
 religious == belief in God
 However there are religions where belief in God is irreligious --
 Jainism 

I think that it will come as rather a surprise to Jains to be told that 
they don't believe in god. In fact, they believe in a multitude of gods 
(not surprising, as Jainism is derived from Hinduism) and believe that 
every soul has the potential to become a god. 


 And others where it is is irrelevant -- Tao, Shinto. [There is
 the story of a westerner who wen to a shinto temple and said: All this
 (rites) is fine and beautiful but what's your *philosophy* To which he
 was told: Philosophy? We have no philosophy! We dance!]

A nice story, but the name Shinto even means The Way Of The Gods, so 
claiming that Shinto is not about gods is rubbish.

It might be true that there is a particular Shinto temple where they have 
no religious beliefs and just dance for the love of it, but that's hardly 
the case for *all* Shinto. That would be a bit like claiming that 
Christians don't believe in god because some Unitarians are atheists. 
Shinto has no founder, no overarching doctrine, and no official religious 
texts, so you are more likely to find widely-varying religiosity than 
among Christian churches, but to generalise to all Shinto is misleading.

Similarly for Taoism (Daoism). The Tao itself is not a religious concept, 
it is more of a mystical/philosophical concept than a theistic one, but 
Taoism is a religion with many gods. It seems to me that your statement 
that belief in gods is irrelevant to Taoism is making the same category 
mistake as it would be to say that belief in Jesus is irrelevant to 
Christianity because Faith is not a religious concept[1].


 That's equivalent to being told Don't ever delete any of your code,
 just comment it out. I don't care who's saying that, it's bad advice.
 
 The correct analogy: Dont ever delete content from the repository

No -- the repository is the email archive. (Your inbox, perhaps.) You 
don't keep a copy of the entire repo in every source file.



[1] Or at least, not necessarily a religious concept.

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Re: Teaching python to non-programmers

On Thu, 10 Apr 2014 22:54:23 -0700, Rustom Mody wrote:

 What I am pointing out is that if one gets so besotted with irritation
 as to lose coherence, its unlikely that any useful communication will
 ensue.

This, a million times.

If all we do is be curmudgeons who complain about GG's poor posting 
styles, we will end up making this forum irrelevant.



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Re: Teaching python to non-programmers

2014-04-11 Thread Paul Rudin

Steven D'Aprano steve+comp.lang.pyt...@pearwood.info writes:

 On Thu, 10 Apr 2014 22:42:14 -0700, Rustom Mody wrote:

 In middle-eastern society women are expected to dress heavier than in
 the West. A few years ago a girl went to school in France with a scarf
 and she was penalized.

 Citation please. I think this is bogus...

This is not bogus. France has quite a strong tradition of keeping the
education system secular and has passed a law regarding the wearing of
ostentatious religious symbols in public schools, which also affects
things like the wearing of crosses.

Wikipedia has plenty on this...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_scarf_controversy_in_France

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Re: Teaching python to non-programmers

2014-04-11 Thread alister

On Fri, 11 Apr 2014 21:01:46 +1000, Chris Angelico wrote:

 On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 8:46 PM, alister
 alister.nospam.w...@ntlworld.com wrote:
 Right up to the point when someone forwards on an internal email chain
 to an external customer without bothering to prune out the bit where
 someone (usually an engineer like myself) has stated (bluntly) that
 what the salesman is proposing will never work*.

 the longer the chain the more likely it is for something like that to
 be missed by the sender who wont have bothered to read everything (for
 some reason the recipient always finds the embarrassing statements).

 *Or some other commercially sensitive  even more damming piece of
 information.
 
 According to Snopes, that has happened in an email variant of the old
 send this guy the standard cockroach letter story (which is itself
 plausible and not provably false):
 
 http://www.snopes.com/business/consumer/bedbug.asp
 
 ChrisA

forget Snopes I have personally been hauled into a managers office 
because something i put in an email to another member of staff was then 
forwarded to the customer.

Fortunately my defence of internal emails should not be being forwarded 
to customers without being sanitised was accepted ( the other member of 
staff educated)



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Re: Teaching python to non-programmers

On Fri, 11 Apr 2014 12:46:05 +0100, Paul Rudin wrote:

 Steven D'Aprano steve+comp.lang.pyt...@pearwood.info writes:
 
 On Thu, 10 Apr 2014 22:42:14 -0700, Rustom Mody wrote:

 In middle-eastern society women are expected to dress heavier than in
 the West. A few years ago a girl went to school in France with a scarf
 and she was penalized.

 Citation please. I think this is bogus...
 
 This is not bogus. France has quite a strong tradition of keeping the
 education system secular and has passed a law regarding the wearing of
 ostentatious religious symbols in public schools, which also affects
 things like the wearing of crosses.
 
 Wikipedia has plenty on this...
 
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_scarf_controversy_in_France


Which does not differ that much from the rest of my post, which you 
deleted. It wasn't just a scarf, it was a religious head-covering, the 
hijab, and despite the original context which suggests that the poor girl 
happened to turn up to school one day with a scarf and was penalized just 
for bringing it to school, the three girls were asked to remove their 
hijabs, and were only penalized when they refused to obey school rules.

I don't know where I stand on the hijab in general, but in this specific 
case, I stand by my skepticism about Rustom's description.



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Re: Teaching python to non-programmers

2014-04-11 Thread Tim Chase

On 2014-04-11 11:34, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
  That's equivalent to being told Don't ever delete any of your
  code, just comment it out. I don't care who's saying that, it's
  bad advice.  
  
  The correct analogy: Dont ever delete content from the
  repository  
 
 No -- the repository is the email archive. (Your inbox, perhaps.)
 You don't keep a copy of the entire repo in every source file.

Clearly you've not seen some of the corporate code-bases I've had to
touch. «shudder»  I still have nightmares about vast swaths of code
commented out or #ifdef 0ed out.

Then again, since they used Visual Source Safe, it might have been
the smarter/safer option ;-)

-tkc



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Re: Teaching python to non-programmers

On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 10:39 PM, Tim Chase
python.l...@tim.thechases.com wrote:
 On 2014-04-11 11:34, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
  That's equivalent to being told Don't ever delete any of your
  code, just comment it out. I don't care who's saying that, it's
  bad advice.
 
  The correct analogy: Dont ever delete content from the
  repository

 No -- the repository is the email archive. (Your inbox, perhaps.)
 You don't keep a copy of the entire repo in every source file.

 Clearly you've not seen some of the corporate code-bases I've had to
 touch. «shudder»  I still have nightmares about vast swaths of code
 commented out or #ifdef 0ed out.

 Then again, since they used Visual Source Safe, it might have been
 the smarter/safer option ;-)

I think Steven was agreeing with me that it's bad advice, rather than
that it never happens... There's an expression on The Daily WTF:
Enterprise happens. Covers this situation well, IMO.

http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The-Enterprise-Dependency.aspx

ChrisA
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Re: Teaching python to non-programmers

2014-04-11 Thread Mark Lawrence


On 10/04/2014 21:52, pete.bee@gmail.com wrote:




Just awesome, not only do we have double line spacing and single line

paragraphs, we've also got top posting, oh boy am I a happy bunny :)

I'll leave someone3 else to explain, I just can't be bothered.




Do you get paid to be a jerk, or is it just for yuks?  If the latter, you're 
not funny.



Lucky I didn't say anything about the dirty knife.

--
My fellow Pythonistas, ask not what our language can do for you, ask 
what you can do for our language.


Mark Lawrence

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Re: Teaching python to non-programmers

2014-04-11 Thread Mark H Harris


On 4/10/14 3:52 PM, pete.bee@gmail.com wrote:


Do you get paid to be a jerk, or is it just for yuks?  If the latter, you're 
not funny.



Mark is the c.l.python resident margin police. Think of him as a welcome 
committee with an attitude.


:)
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Re: Teaching python to non-programmers

2014-04-11 Thread Mark H Harris


On 4/10/14 10:54 AM, Lalitha Prasad K wrote:

Dear List

Recently I was requested to teach python to a group of students of GIS
(Geographic Information Systems).


   Adults?  ... what age ranges?


Their knowledge of programming is
zero. The objective is to enable them to write plug-ins for GIS software
like QGIS and ArcGIS.


   Its a fabulous idea. Integrating disciplines is the correct approach 
to computer science education in my opinion.
   From day one (and yes I was there on day one) computer science knows 
nothing about the insurance industry, and underwriters know nothing 
about programming. The way to get these two groups together is to 
integrate comp sci education with underwriting.



It would require them to learn, besides core
python, PyQt, QtDesigner. So my plan is to teach them core python, PyQt,
Qt Designer, in that order. A kind of bottom up approach.


   Beautiful.


But the
students seem to feel that I should use top down approach. That is,
show them how to write a plug-in, then PyQt and Qt Designer and then
enough of python so they can handle the above.


   The phrase just enough python is almost possible. I am working on 
a project I call SimplyPy that has this same goal in mind; but I'm not 
finished yet. But the idea is to boil the galaxy of python down to a 
small solar system with a couple of planets. If these cats are in their 
early twenties, no problem. If they really are non programmers it will 
be easier because they come to the table teachable. I would rather have 
twenty students tabula rosa than having one student who thinks they 
already know everything.




marcus

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Re: Teaching python to non-programmers

2014-04-11 Thread Rustom Mody

On Friday, April 11, 2014 5:04:28 PM UTC+5:30, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
I've been in plenty of mailing list forums where interleaved posting was
required, but there's only so many times you can tell people off for
being rude before you start coming across as rude yourself.

It's one of those nasty aspects of human psychology: the guy who casually
and without malice tosses litter out of his car window, spoiling things
for everyone, is somehow considered less obnoxious than the person who
tells him off. Except in Switzerland, where if you leave your rubbish bin
out more than twenty minutes after its been emptied, the neighbours
consider it perfectly acceptable to tell you off, never mind that you've
been at work. And heaven help you if you take your discarded Christmas
tree down to the street too early.

Yes this is correct: we make the world a worse place by choosing to
be 'nice guys' when some telling off would help. And I am remiss on this
matter since I dont post that python-google-groups link when I should. [Can
never find the damn link when needed though I wrote half of it myself!]

For the rest, Im not sure that you need my help in making a fool of yourself...
Anyway since you are requesting said help, here goes:

On Thu, 10 Apr 2014 22:42:14 -0700, Rustom Mody wrote:

People whose familiarity with religion is limited to the Judeo-Christian
tradition are inclined to the view (usually implicit) that being
religious == belief in God
However there are religions where belief in God is irreligious --

Jainism

I think that it will come as rather a surprise to Jains to be told that
they don't believe in god. In fact, they believe in a multitude of gods
(not surprising, as Jainism is derived from Hinduism) and believe that
every soul has the potential to become a god.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_in_Jainism
and particularly
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_in_Jainism#Heavenly_Beings

And others where it is is irrelevant -- Tao, Shinto. [There is
the story of a westerner who wen to a shinto temple and said: All this
(rites) is fine and beautiful but what's your *philosophy* To which he
was told: Philosophy? We have no philosophy! We dance!]

A nice story, but the name Shinto even means The Way Of The Gods, so
claiming that Shinto is not about gods is rubbish.

http://books.google.co.in/books?id=b-VACc7jcOAClpg=PA159ots=femTbp96rhdq=shinto%20%22We%20have%20no%20philosophy%22%20we%20dancepg=PA159#v=onepageq=shinto%20%22We%20have%20no%20philosophy%22%20we%20dancef=false

In middle-eastern society women are expected to dress heavier than in
the West. A few years ago a girl went to school in France with a scarf
and she was penalized.

Citation please. I think this is bogus, although given how obnoxious some
schools can be I'm not quite prepared to rule it out altogether. I think
it's far more likely that she was only penalized for wearing full head-
covering (not just a scarf) after being warned that it was not part of
the school uniform and therefore not appropriate.

In spite of Paul pointing out the link (thanks Paul)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_scarf_controversy_in_France

you still persist in

in this specific case, I stand by my skepticism

So you think that wikipedia link/article is bogus?

Anyway.. To come back to the point of those examples:

You are welcome to your view:

I don't know that there is anyone here that thinks interleaved posting is
the norm among the majority of email users. Nor is anyone saying that
Usenet posters make up a majority of internet users. What we are saying
is that *interleaved posting is objectively better* for most forms of
email or news communication (although it is not a panacea), and
especially for *technical discussions* like those that occur here.

All those examples were adduced only to say that like matters of dress and
matters of God-belief are not absolute standards in any frame, in any sense,
so also mail etiquette.
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Re: Teaching python to non-programmers

2014-04-11 Thread pete . bee . emm

On Thursday, April 10, 2014 3:40:22 PM UTC-7, Rhodri James wrote:
 It's called irony, and unfortunately Mark is reacting to an all-to-common  
 situation that GoogleGroups foists on unsuspecting posters like yourself.   

People who say I can't be bothered to correct this while posting a wise a$$ 
correction are just trolling, probably not funny in real life either. I think 
if you're going to wise off than be witty about it, otherwise just a terse 
reference to a link.

At any rate, my original point stands. You're not teaching on planet Vulcan. 
Better to teach things in an odd order if that helps motivates your students. 
It's not like people in real life carefully examine all available documentation 
before learning some piece of tech. Usually they shrug and say what's the 
worst that could happen, dive in, and roll with the consequences.
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Re: Teaching python to non-programmers

2014-04-11 Thread Rustom Mody

On Saturday, April 12, 2014 1:50:05 AM UTC+5:30, pete.b...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Thursday, April 10, 2014 3:40:22 PM UTC-7, Rhodri James wrote:
 
  It's called irony, and unfortunately Mark is reacting to an all-to-common  
  situation that GoogleGroups foists on unsuspecting posters like yourself.   
 
 
 
 People who say I can't be bothered to correct this while posting a wise a$$ 
 correction are just trolling, probably not funny in real life either. I think 
 if you're going to wise off than be witty about it, otherwise just a terse 
 reference to a link.

Thanks Pete for taking the trouble for aligning your posting style with
the norms expected out here.

On problem -- the over long lines -- remains.

If you compare your post
https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2014-April/670693.html

with typical neighboring others, you will see that.

[Just for the record I should mention that I did not know this to be a problem
for a long time until someone pointed it out to me.
]
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Re: Teaching python to non-programmers

On Fri, 11 Apr 2014 11:19:22 -0700, Rustom Mody wrote:

 On Friday, April 11, 2014 5:04:28 PM UTC+5:30, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
[...]
 For the rest, Im not sure that you need my help in making a fool of
 yourself... Anyway since you are requesting said help, here goes:

Very strong words.


 On Thu, 10 Apr 2014 22:42:14 -0700, Rustom Mody wrote:
 
 
  People whose familiarity with religion is limited to the
  Judeo-Christian tradition are inclined to the view (usually implicit)
  that being religious == belief in God
  However there are religions where belief in God is irreligious --
 
  Jainism
 
 I think that it will come as rather a surprise to Jains to be told that
 they don't believe in god. In fact, they believe in a multitude of gods
 (not surprising, as Jainism is derived from Hinduism) and believe that
 every soul has the potential to become a god.
 
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_in_Jainism and particularly
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_in_Jainism#Heavenly_Beings


- You state that in Jainism, belief in god (which one?) is
  irreligious (i.e. hostile to religion);

- I point out that in the case of Jains, belief in many gods is 
  in fact a core part of their religion;

- you attempt to refute me by linking to an article which confirms 
  that belief in gods is part of Jainism.

And that's supposed to prove that I'm wrong?

Perhaps you think that belief in gods is ipso facto the same as 
worshipping those gods? That's an awfully naive view, especially for 
someone who started this discussion by complaining about the naivety of 
other people's understanding of religion.


  And others where it is is irrelevant -- Tao, Shinto. [There is the
  story of a westerner who wen to a shinto temple and said: All this
  (rites) is fine and beautiful but what's your *philosophy* To which
  he was told: Philosophy? We have no philosophy! We dance!]
 
 A nice story, but the name Shinto even means The Way Of The Gods,
 so claiming that Shinto is not about gods is rubbish.
 
 http://books.google.co.in/books?id=b-
VACc7jcOAClpg=PA159ots=femTbp96rhdq=shinto%20%22We%20have%20no%
20philosophy%22%20we%20dancepg=PA159#v=onepageq=shinto%20%22We%20have%
20no%20philosophy%22%20we%20dancef=false

What's this supposed to prove? It's a nice story. The book you linked to 
doesn't give any more details than you do, it even states A story is 
told. It's an unnamed philosopher, an unnamed priest from an anonymous 
temple. There is *absolutely nothing* suggesting it ever happened in real 
life, but even if it did, it certainly doesn't suggest anything about 
Shinto. If anything, it's about the ignorance of the supposed American 
philosopher.

Did you think I was questioning the existence of the story? I said 
nothing to suggest you made the story up (although it seems to me that 
the author you quote probably did). I don't question the existence of the 
story. I question that the story is meaningful.

It seems to me that only somebody *completely ignorant of Shinto* can 
possible think that Shinto in general has no philosophy or religious 
meaning. Shinto, as a glorified (literally) folk-religion, may lack the 
sort of over-arching grand philosophies of (say) the Catholic Church, but 
I think it is an astonishingly foolish thing to suggest that all they do 
is dance. Even figuratively.


  In middle-eastern society women are expected to dress heavier than in
  the West. A few years ago a girl went to school in France with a
  scarf and she was penalized.
 
 Citation please. I think this is bogus, although given how obnoxious
 some schools can be I'm not quite prepared to rule it out altogether. I
 think it's far more likely that she was only penalized for wearing full
 head- covering (not just a scarf) after being warned that it was not
 part of the school uniform and therefore not appropriate.
 
 In spite of Paul pointing out the link (thanks Paul)
 
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_scarf_controversy_in_France
 
 you still persist in
 
 in this specific case, I stand by my skepticism
 
 So you think that wikipedia link/article is bogus?

That article supports what I stated: the three girls (not one) were not 
penalized without warning for merely turning up to school with scarves. 
They were penalized for refusing to remove their hajibs, which were 
against the school's dress code.




-- 
Steven D'Aprano
http://import-that.dreamwidth.org/
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Teaching python to non-programmers

2014-04-10 Thread Lalitha Prasad K

Dear List

Recently I was requested to teach python to a group of students of GIS
(Geographic Information Systems). Their knowledge of programming is zero.
The objective is to enable them to write plug-ins for GIS software like
QGIS and ArcGIS. It would require them to learn, besides core python, PyQt,
QtDesigner. So my plan is to teach them core python, PyQt, Qt Designer, in
that order. A kind of bottom up approach. But the students seem to feel
that I should use top down approach. That is, show them how to write a
plug-in, then PyQt and Qt Designer and then enough of python so they can
handle the above. I don't think, that is possible or a good idea. But I
would like to know, if there are any other approaches.

Thanks and Regards
Lalitha Prasad,
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Re: Teaching python to non-programmers

2014-04-10 Thread pete . bee . emm

Don't underestimate the value of morale. Python is a scripting language. You 
don't need to teach them very much python to get something working, and you can 
always revisit the initial code and refactor it for better coding hygiene. 

Someday they might have jobs, and be required to learn things in more of a top 
down order. ;)

On Thursday, April 10, 2014 8:54:48 AM UTC-7, Lalitha Prasad K wrote:
 Dear List
 
 Recently I was requested to teach python to a group of students of GIS 
 (Geographic Information Systems). Their knowledge of programming is zero. The 
 objective is to enable them to write plug-ins for GIS software like QGIS and 
 ArcGIS. It would require them to learn, besides core python, PyQt, 
 QtDesigner. So my plan is to teach them core python, PyQt, Qt Designer, in 
 that order. A kind of bottom up approach. But the students seem to feel 
 that I should use top down approach. That is, show them how to write a 
 plug-in, then PyQt and Qt Designer and then enough of python so they can 
 handle the above. I don't think, that is possible or a good idea. But I would 
 like to know, if there are any other approaches.
 
 
 
 Thanks and Regards
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Lalitha Prasad, 
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Re: Teaching python to non-programmers

On Thursday, April 10, 2014 9:24:48 PM UTC+5:30, Lalitha Prasad K wrote:
 Dear List
 
 Recently I was requested to teach python to a group of students of GIS 
 (Geographic Information Systems). Their knowledge of programming is zero. The 
 objective is to enable them to write plug-ins for GIS software like QGIS and 
 ArcGIS. It would require them to learn, besides core python, PyQt, 
 QtDesigner. So my plan is to teach them core python, PyQt, Qt Designer, in 
 that order. A kind of bottom up approach. But the students seem to feel 
 that I should use top down approach. That is, show them how to write a 
 plug-in, then PyQt and Qt Designer and then enough of python so they can 
 handle the above. I don't think, that is possible or a good idea. But I would 
 like to know, if there are any other approaches.
 
 
 Thanks and Regards

Theres a Mulla Nassr Eddin story:
Villagers A and B had a dispute. They went to Mulla.
A gave his harangue for a while...
Mulla: You are right!
The B came and gave his story
Mulla (to B) You are right
Mulla's wife (scratching her head): But Mulla?! Both cant be right?!?!
Mulla: You are right.

When you are a teacher you have to learn to say Yes Yes! to all sorts of 
demands -- from curriculum, boards, colleagues, and of course students

And then keep on doing what you know is right!

I have some writings on the stupidities of CS edu establishment
http://blog.languager.org/2011/02/cs-education-is-fat-and-weak-1.html
and following
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Re: Teaching python to non-programmers

2014-04-10 Thread Mark Lawrence

On 10/04/2014 18:53, pete.bee@gmail.com wrote:

Don't underestimate the value of morale. Python is a scripting language. You
don't need to teach them very much python to get something working, and you can
always revisit the initial code and refactor it for better coding hygiene.

Someday they might have jobs, and be required to learn things in more of a top
down order. ;)

On Thursday, April 10, 2014 8:54:48 AM UTC-7, Lalitha Prasad K wrote:

Dear List

Recently I was requested to teach python to a group of students of GIS (Geographic Information
Systems). Their knowledge of programming is zero. The objective is to enable them to write plug-ins
for GIS software like QGIS and ArcGIS. It would require them to learn, besides core python, PyQt,
QtDesigner. So my plan is to teach them core python, PyQt, Qt Designer, in that order. A kind of
bottom up approach. But the students seem to feel that I should use top down
approach. That is, show them how to write a plug-in, then PyQt and Qt Designer and then
enough of python so they can handle the above. I don't think, that is possible or a good idea. But
I would like to know, if there are any other approaches.

Thanks and Regards

Lalitha Prasad,

Just awesome, not only do we have double line spacing and single line
paragraphs, we've also got top posting, oh boy am I a happy bunny :)
I'll leave someone3 else to explain, I just can't be bothered.

--
My fellow Pythonistas, ask not what our language can do for you, ask
what you can do for our language.

Mark Lawrence

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is active.
http://www.avast.com

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Re: Teaching python to non-programmers

2014-04-10 Thread pete . bee . emm


 
 Just awesome, not only do we have double line spacing and single line 
 
 paragraphs, we've also got top posting, oh boy am I a happy bunny :) 
 
 I'll leave someone3 else to explain, I just can't be bothered.
 
 

Do you get paid to be a jerk, or is it just for yuks?  If the latter, you're 
not funny. 
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Re: Teaching python to non-programmers

2014-04-10 Thread Rhodri James


On Thu, 10 Apr 2014 21:52:53 +0100, pete.bee@gmail.com wrote:





Just awesome, not only do we have double line spacing and single line

paragraphs, we've also got top posting, oh boy am I a happy bunny :)

I'll leave someone3 else to explain, I just can't be bothered.




Do you get paid to be a jerk, or is it just for yuks?  If the latter,  
you're not funny.


It's called irony, and unfortunately Mark is reacting to an all-to-common  
situation that GoogleGroups foists on unsuspecting posters like yourself.   
It's the result of a fundamental clash of technological cultures; trying  
to impose a pretty web interface on a protocol defined to use unformatted  
plain text.  It fails, inevitably, leaving us Usenet and  
mailing-list-based readers annoyed at being given something unreadable to  
deal with.  Unsurprisingly, most of us don't bother, and won't have read  
more than the first couple of words of your original post.


The wiki page https://wiki.python.org/moin/GoogleGroupsPython goes into  
some detail of what the rest of us find annoying, and how to fix the  
problems.  I've left the double-spacing that you quoting Mark produced so  
you can see that part of the problem -- if you want to understand why it  
is so hated, imagine that done to a screenful of Python script, then  
quoted by a few more people on GG, until you're only getting half a dozen  
lines of code (or text) on the screen.  That sort of thing is hard work to  
read, and not many bother, and yes, it really does happen.


Top posting is generally poor netiquette, thank you for not doing it this  
time.  Unfortunately you fell into another trap GG lays for you by not  
handling attributions properly.  Or at all this time.  I happen to  
remember that you were replying to Mark Lawrence (just in case it was  
impossible for me to guess from the subject matter :-), but if I hadn't  
remembered that, I wouldn't have known from the context without going and  
searching.  Again, that's work many people won't bother putting in, making  
your post less likely to be read.


Sorry your post was the straw to break the camel's back this week, but it  
is a complete pain to the rest of us.  I have more than once considered  
getting my reader to automatically discard anything with  
@googlegroups.com in the message ID just to reduce the aggravation.


--
Rhodri James *-* Wildebeest Herder to the Masses
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Re: Teaching python to non-programmers

On Friday, April 11, 2014 4:10:22 AM UTC+5:30, Rhodri James wrote:
 Sorry your post was the straw to break the camel's back this week, but it  
 is a complete pain to the rest of us.  I have more than once considered  
 getting my reader to automatically discard anything with  
 @googlegroups.com in the message ID just to reduce the aggravation.

I had a colleague at the university who had taught System Programming for the 
fifth year running. One day he confided to us (other colleagues):
  I think I am losing it...
  I am getting impatient and am inclined to tell the class:
  Ive taught all this to you (so many times!) before
  Until I realize its not this class!!

 The wiki page https://wiki.python.org/moin/GoogleGroupsPython goes into  
 some detail of what the rest of us find annoying, and how to fix the  
 problems.  

So we need to... (one of)
- Patiently point out that link to each newcomer here
- Silently put up
- Express 'last straw' irritation and get called a jerk
- Canvas with python list owners to stop GG
- Canvas with Google to modify else shut down GG
- Your choice here

 I've left the double-spacing that you quoting Mark produced so  
 you can see that part of the problem -- if you want to understand why it  
 is so hated, imagine that done to a screenful of Python script, then  
 quoted by a few more people on GG, until you're only getting half a dozen  
 lines of code (or text) on the screen.  That sort of thing is hard work to
 read, and not many bother, and yes, it really does happen.

Its no use.
GG hides all the double-spaced, top-posted stuff in a very small font 
show quoted text. If you want to show it more effectively you need to do 
something like this (or point to the mailing list archive)

 On Thu, 10 Apr 2014 21:52:53 +0100, Pete Bee wrote:
- 
- 
- 
- 
- 
- 
- 
-  Just awesome, not only do we have double line spacing and single line
- 
- 
- 
-  paragraphs, we've also got top posting, oh boy am I a happy bunny :)
- 
- 
- 
-  I'll leave someone3 else to explain, I just can't be bothered.
- 
- 
- 
- 
- 
- 
- 
-  Do you get paid to be a jerk, or is it just for yuks?  If the latter,  
-
-  you're not funny.
- 
- 
- 
---


 Top posting is generally poor netiquette, thank you for not doing it this  
 time.

There are cultures -- far more pervasive than USENET in 2014 -- where
top posting is the norm, eg
- Gmail makes top posting the norm. Compare the figures of gmail and Usenet 
users
- Corporate cultures more or less require top posting -- helped by MS Outlook
  Else it looks like dishonesty/dissimulation/hiding
- Personally I am on different groups. I tend to top post by default. And its
  as strange and bizarre there as its required minimum etiquette here

 Unfortunately you fell into another trap GG lays for you by not  
 handling attributions properly.  Or at all this time.


[Personally] Double spacing bothers me least, top posting more, 
non/mis-attribution most
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Ostracising bad actors (was: Teaching python to non-programmers)

2014-04-10 Thread Ben Finney

Rhodri James rho...@wildebst.org.uk writes:

 Sorry your post was the straw to break the camel's back this week, but
 it is a complete pain to the rest of us. I have more than once
 considered getting my reader to automatically discard anything with
 @googlegroups.com in the message ID just to reduce the aggravation.

I passed that threshold long ago. Posts that come to my Usenet client
via Google Groups are automatically marked for deletion.

I strongly recommend everyone do the same; and also to lobby for (and
support) alternative Usenet interfaces which don't mangle the messages.

-- 
 \ “You know what would make a good story? Something about a clown |
  `\who makes people happy, but inside he's real sad. Also, he has |
_o__)   severe diarrhea.” —Jack Handey |
Ben Finney

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Re: Teaching python to non-programmers

On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 1:17 PM, Rustom Mody rustompm...@gmail.com wrote:
 There are cultures -- far more pervasive than USENET in 2014 -- where
 top posting is the norm, eg
 - Gmail makes top posting the norm. Compare the figures of gmail and Usenet 
 users
 - Corporate cultures more or less require top posting -- helped by MS Outlook
   Else it looks like dishonesty/dissimulation/hiding
 - Personally I am on different groups. I tend to top post by default. And its
   as strange and bizarre there as its required minimum etiquette here

I have seen plenty of cultures where people are unaware of the value
of interleaved/bottom posting, but so far, not one where anyone has
actually required it. Not one. Norm here just means the thing
people are too lazy to not do. That's not a reason for anyone else
doing it.

ChrisA
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Re: Teaching python to non-programmers

On Friday, April 11, 2014 9:29:00 AM UTC+5:30, Chris Angelico wrote:
 On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 1:17 PM, Rustom Mody wrote:
 
  There are cultures -- far more pervasive than USENET in 2014 -- where
  top posting is the norm, eg
 
  - Gmail makes top posting the norm. Compare the figures of gmail and Usenet 
  users
  - Corporate cultures more or less require top posting -- helped by MS 
  Outlook
Else it looks like dishonesty/dissimulation/hiding
  - Personally I am on different groups. I tend to top post by default. And 
  its
as strange and bizarre there as its required minimum etiquette here
 
 I have seen plenty of cultures where people are unaware of the value
 of interleaved/bottom posting, but so far, not one where anyone has
 actually required it. Not one. Norm here just means the thing
 people are too lazy to not do. That's not a reason for anyone else
 doing it.

Right. Its true that when I was at a fairly large corporate, I was not told:
Please always top post!

What I was very gently and super politely told was:
Please dont delete mail context

Now when a mail goes round between 5 persons and what is addressed at one point 
is not the immediate previous mail, bottom-posting without pruning is as
meaningless as top posting.

As in religion or any cultural matter, its fine to stand up for and even
vociferously uphold one's 'own' whatever that may be.

What is unhelpful is
- to suggest that my norms are universal norms. IOW there is a fundamental
  difference between natural and human-made laws
- to lose track of statistics, in this case the population-densities of USENET 
  vs other internet-kiddie cultures
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Re: Teaching python to non-programmers

On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 2:37 PM, Rustom Mody rustompm...@gmail.com wrote:
 Right. Its true that when I was at a fairly large corporate, I was not told:
 Please always top post!

 What I was very gently and super politely told was:
 Please dont delete mail context

Then you were told that by someone who does not understand email.
That's equivalent to being told Don't ever delete any of your code,
just comment it out. I don't care who's saying that, it's bad advice.

 Now when a mail goes round between 5 persons and what is addressed at one 
 point
 is not the immediate previous mail, bottom-posting without pruning is as
 meaningless as top posting.

Yep. So you bottom-post *and prune*, because that is how email needs
to be. You do not need to repeatedly send copies of the whole thread
everywhere.

 What is unhelpful is
 - to suggest that my norms are universal norms. IOW there is a fundamental
   difference between natural and human-made laws
 - to lose track of statistics, in this case the population-densities of USENET
   vs other internet-kiddie cultures

Also unhelpful is to suggest that norms should, simply *because* they
are the prevailing practice, be maintained. Even if everyone else on
python-list top-posted, I would still bottom-post and trim. Normal
is not a justification.

ChrisA
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Re: Teaching python to non-programmers

2014-04-10 Thread Paul Rudin

Chris Angelico ros...@gmail.com writes:

 On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 2:37 PM, Rustom Mody rustompm...@gmail.com wrote:
 Right. Its true that when I was at a fairly large corporate, I was not told:
 Please always top post!

 What I was very gently and super politely told was:
 Please dont delete mail context

 Then you were told that by someone who does not understand email.

It's not necessarily a bad idea to retain context in corporate
emails. Messages tend to get forwarded to people other than the original
recipient(s), and the context can be very helpful.

But when you're posting to a mailing list or to a usenet group different
considerations apply as there's usually a way of seeing the whole
thread.

Email is often a poor relatively poor medium for internal communication,
because of this problem. Also people who might properly have a something
useful to say on the subject matter may never get to see the email.

A private news server or web forum is often better.

That's not to say that there's no place for email in internal
communication, but it's best reserved for occasions where
confidentiality is required, or at least politic.
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Re: Teaching python to non-programmers

2014-04-10 Thread Ian Kelly

On Thu, Apr 10, 2014 at 11:11 PM, Chris Angelico ros...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 2:37 PM, Rustom Mody rustompm...@gmail.com wrote:
 Right. Its true that when I was at a fairly large corporate, I was not told:
 Please always top post!

 What I was very gently and super politely told was:
 Please dont delete mail context

 Then you were told that by someone who does not understand email.
 That's equivalent to being told Don't ever delete any of your code,
 just comment it out. I don't care who's saying that, it's bad advice.

That depends on what the mail is being used for.  For instance there's
a difference between mail-as-dialogue and mail-as-business-process.
In the former it is normal, even polite, to prune as the topic evolves
and past quotations become less relevant.  In the latter it seems more
common for the entire thread to be preserved as a sort of chain of
custody -- this way the next person who needs to see the email thread
has full context as to what needs to happen and where the request is
coming from.

I'm generally in the habit of not pruning work-related emails even
when they are more of the dialogue type, because these tend to be very
tightly focused, and so that if a new person needs to be brought into
the conversation they will have the full context of what we're talking
about and why we're talking about it.
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Re: Teaching python to non-programmers

On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 3:34 PM, Paul Rudin paul.nos...@rudin.co.uk wrote:
 Chris Angelico ros...@gmail.com writes:

 On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 2:37 PM, Rustom Mody rustompm...@gmail.com wrote:
 What I was very gently and super politely told was:
 Please dont delete mail context

 Then you were told that by someone who does not understand email.

 It's not necessarily a bad idea to retain context in corporate
 emails. Messages tend to get forwarded to people other than the original
 recipient(s), and the context can be very helpful.

A good mail client will let you forward an entire thread all at once.
That covers the use-case without polluting *every single email ever
sent* with the entire history. Plus, a decent client should let you
forward some without others, which would mean you don't have the
awkward situation of sending someone all the internal discussion
(just send this guy the standard cockroach letter) that led to the
final decision.

Retaining context should either be done with an internal wiki or
forum, or by reading up in the retained emails. You don't need to
duplicate all context every post in any medium.

ChrisA
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Re: Teaching python to non-programmers

On Friday, April 11, 2014 10:41:26 AM UTC+5:30, Chris Angelico wrote:
 On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 2:37 PM, Rustom Mody  wrote:
  Right. Its true that when I was at a fairly large corporate, I was not told:
  Please always top post!
 
  What I was very gently and super politely told was:
  Please dont delete mail context

 Then you were told that by someone who does not understand email.

In middle-eastern society women are expected to dress heavier than in the West.
A few years ago a girl went to school in France with a scarf and she was 
penalized.

You seem to be cocksure who is right.
Im just curious who you think it is :-)

People whose familiarity with religion is limited to the Judeo-Christian
tradition are inclined to the view (usually implicit) that
being religious == belief in God
However there are religions where belief in God is irreligious -- Jainism
And others where it is is irrelevant -- Tao, Shinto.
[There is the story of a westerner who wen to a shinto temple and said:
All this (rites) is fine and beautiful but what's your *philosophy*
To which he was told: Philosophy? We have no philosophy! We dance!]



 That's equivalent to being told Don't ever delete any of your code,
 just comment it out. I don't care who's saying that, it's bad advice.

The correct analogy: Dont ever delete content from the repository


  Now when a mail goes round between 5 persons and what is addressed at one 
  point
  is not the immediate previous mail, bottom-posting without pruning is as
  meaningless as top posting.


 Yep. So you bottom-post *and prune*, because that is how email needs
 to be. You do not need to repeatedly send copies of the whole thread
 everywhere.


  What is unhelpful is
  - to suggest that my norms are universal norms. IOW there is a fundamental
difference between natural and human-made laws
  - to lose track of statistics, in this case the population-densities of 
  USENET
vs other internet-kiddie cultures



 Also unhelpful is to suggest that norms should, simply *because* they
 are the prevailing practice, be maintained. Even if everyone else on
 python-list top-posted, I would still bottom-post and trim. Normal
 is not a justification.

Ok no argument here.
On the python list that is the norm.
Most people who are first timers have no clue about that norm.
-- 
https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Teaching python to non-programmers