Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[Peter J. Holzer]

On 2018-01-28 15:04:26 +, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> I'm seeing this annoying practice more and more often. Even for trivial 
> pieces of text, a few lines, people post screenshots instead of copying 
> the code.

For your amusment, here is how a well-known German tech news site
publishes source-code:

https://video.golem.de/files/1/9/20542/twitterreplybotpython.pdf?start=0.00

hp

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|_|_) || because we have much more sophisticated
| |   | h...@hjp.at | management tools.
__/   | http://www.hjp.at/ | -- Ross Anderson 


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Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[eryk sun]

On Fri, Feb 2, 2018 at 6:28 PM, Gilmeh Serda
 wrote:
>
> M$'s excuse for a real Terminal, "Power" Shell (sigh), is _slightly_
> better but still lacking lots of features. Like a decent scripting
> language. I loath VBS. ¦þ,,, /puke

PowerShell is a .NET scripting language that's available in Windows,
Linux, and MacOS. VBScript is an unrelated scripting language that was
more commonly used on Windows before PowerShell came along. On
Windows, powershell.exe either allocates a console or inherits one
from its parent.

The Windows console adapts the message-based desktop environment to
support command-line applications. It provides an input stream with
keyboard and mouse records, and screen buffers that support UCS-2 and
a 16-color palette. In Windows 10, it also functions as a virtual
terminal with 24-bit color.

In Windows 7 and up, each console is hosted by a separate instance of
conhost.exe. Previously, NT systems hosted consoles in the system
process, csrss.exe.

In Windows 8 and up, the console API uses the ConDrv device for IPC
with an attached console. Previously, NT systems used LPC ports and
shared memory for this.

In Windows 9x, the console window was hosted by conagent.exe, and the
API used the VCOND device for IPC.

Despite the ever-changing implementation details, the console API
itself has been relatively stable for about 25 years.

> It does have mouse selection (but still treats the text as a block of
> characters, like a DOS box, and not lines of text, like Terminal)

In Windows 10, the console uses line-wrapping selection by default,
and rectangle selection requires holding ALT.
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Re: [OT] Dutch Reach [was Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?]

[Rustom Mody]

On Wednesday, January 31, 2018 at 11:17:45 PM UTC+5:30, Adriaan Renting wrote:
> I am Dutch and after googling the term, I can confirm that the "Dutch
> Reach" is taught in driving school here.
> I was taught this maneuvre when getting my licence 20 years ago.

 

> And in the Netherlands, we largely solve this problem by just having
> everyone on a bike. ;-)
> (We do ride cars as well)

Good to have an existence proof for civilization

Topic remains wildly OT until somebody adds one more piece to the jigsaw:
"…statistical evidence that the practice of 'dutch-reach' has significantly
reduced the instances of dooring…"
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Re: [OT] Dutch Reach [was Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?]

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Wed, 31 Jan 2018 16:14:45 +0100, Adriaan Renting wrote:

> I am Dutch and after googling the term, I can confirm that the "Dutch
> Reach" is taught in driving school here. I was taught this maneuvre when
> getting my licence 20 years ago.

Thanks for the data point. Was it a requirement of the driving test?


> If it is actually used by a lot of people, I can't confirm. I use it
> most of the time, depending on what model car I'm driving. (wether the
> door handles are easy to reach/operate).
> 
> The way I was taught, you have to check your mirrors and then use it to
> force you to check your blind spot, 

But it doesn't force you to do anything - reaching over to the door 
handle with your opposite hand doesn't make you look over your shoulder.

And given that you are stopped, any vehicle travelling in your blind spot 
is going to only be there for a fraction of a second. If you are taking a 
genuine careful look for traffic, rather than a quick careless glance, 
you'll see any vehicle in your blind spot because it won't be in the 
blind spot for long.


> mostly to avoid cars hitting
> you/your door on the drivers side.

Yes, this is also a big problem. I used to work with somebody who came 
within a fraction of a centimetre of taking a woman's arm off when she 
suddenly opened the door to her car as he drove past in a narrow road. He 
took the door completely off.


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Re: [OT] Dutch Reach [was Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?]

[Adriaan Renting]

Adriaan Renting| Email: rent...@astron.nl
Software Engineer Radio Observatory
ASTRON | Phone: +31 521 595 100 (797 direct)
P.O. Box 2 | GSM:   +31 6 24 25 17 28
NL-7990 AA Dwingeloo   | FAX:   +31 521 595 101
The Netherlands| Web: http://www.astron.nl/~renting/



>>> On 30-1-2018 at 19:22, MRAB  wrote: 
> On 2018-01-30 15:39, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
>> On Tue, 30 Jan 2018 05:48:15 -0800, Rustom Mody wrote:
>> 
>> [...]
 Ah, yes, the Dutch Reach. That would be like the French Pox
(which
 isn't French), the Spanish Flu (that didn't start in Spain), the
 Jerusalem artichoke (which is neither an artichoke nor from
Jerusalem),
 and the turkey (the bird, which has nothing to do with Turkey,
the
 country).
 
 This technique is neither taught nor commonly used used by the
Dutch:
 apparently some Americans decided that because the Netherlands has
a
 lot of cyclists, they'll say its Dutch.
>>> 
>>> reference please
>> 
>> The onus should be on those who claim that the technique actually is
used
>> by the Dutch. Anecdotally, the Dutch people I've spoken to on the
>> Internet had no idea that this technique even existed.
>> 
> Do we know of anyone who's Dutch and frequents a Python newsgroup?
:-)
> 

I am Dutch and after googling the term, I can confirm that the "Dutch
Reach" is taught in driving school here.
I was taught this maneuvre when getting my licence 20 years ago.

If it is actually used by a lot of people, I can't confirm.
I use it most of the time, depending on what model car I'm driving.
(wether the door handles are easy to reach/operate).

The way I was taught, you have to check your mirrors and then use it to
force you to check your blind spot, mostly to avoid cars hitting
you/your door on the drivers side.
I don't remember any specific mention of bicycles or use by passengers
of this maneuvre.

I think in general cars are a much larger danger than bicycles:
- Faster: More likely have not been seen by you or not see you.
- More mass: Damage much bigger. (yes also depends on the square of the
velocity).
- Worse perception. A Bicyclist usually has unrestricted hearing and
vision around themselves, and is much more likely to have noticed the
person in the car.
- Bicyclists will understand they are vulnerable and be more careful.

Motorbikes and mopeds are the hardest for me, as they are more likely
to be missed due to their speed.

And in the Netherlands, we largely solve this problem by just having
everyone on a bike. ;-)
(We do ride cars as well)

If you want to know more about how the Dutch go about their cycling and
images of Dutch infrastructure, then I suggest the BicycleDutch Youtube
channel, for example this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swqaAIkGtpA

The difference with a lot of other places, is that we use bicycles as a
means of transport, not as an excercise/sports device.
In general for distances < 15km (10 miles) and anything up to about the
size of a couch.

> [snip]

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Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[alister via Python-list]

On Tue, 30 Jan 2018 21:22:39 +0100, Jugurtha Hadjar wrote:

> On 01/29/2018 03:48 PM, alister via Python-list wrote:
>> On Mon, 29 Jan 2018 15:20:06 +0100, Jugurtha Hadjar wrote:
>>
>>> On 01/28/2018 04:43 PM, Skip Montanaro wrote:
 I've never been a Windows user, but at my current job, Windows is
 core to just about everything, so I am forced to use it for a lot of
 stuff (Outlook, SQL Server, Excel, etc).
>>> I was hired at a startup which made a good impression on me and I was
>>> eager to start working. I checked in for my first day, signed the
>>> paperwork, then the CTO showed me around and told me "Here's your
>>> laptop, you can install Windows and I'll check in with you later".
>>> Life started draining out of my body and my mind was racing in all
>>> directions before he even finished his sentence. I felt tricked: I was
>>> hired based on a test and the file I've received was a *.tar.gz* and
>>> it made me happy because I assumed they were a NIX shop..
>>>
>>> I was considering how I should go about quitting gracefully. I have
>>> stopped using Windows in 2008 for psychological reasons for it made me
>>> really anxious, irritable, angry, and tense to the point of abusing
>>> hardware with low kicks and punches which was not very healthy or
>>> sane. It was only when I switched OS that this behavior stopped. There
>>> was no way I would be going back to my bully.
>>>
>>> The CTO then said "Sorry.. I meant Ubuntu." and seeing my pale face,
>>> he said in a reassuring tone "Don't be afraid, there are no Windows
>>> machines here." which brought me back to life.
>>>
>>> I hope to be as brave as you some day.
>> Any Vacancies whatever they do I am sure I can learn :-)
>>
>>
>>
>>
> We're hiring all the good (technical and human side) people we can
> find/afford. It's a small startup that helps its clients improve
> business using machine learning. We're in Algiers, Algeria and Paris,
> France.

bit of a commute from Sevenage in UK



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Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[Abdur-Rahmaan Janhangeer]

it seems that at the end, invariably, the subject becomes well routed to
regions far away from codeland

Abdur-Rahmaan Janhangeer
https://abdurrahmaanjanhangeer.wordpress.com

On 28 Jan 2018 19:08, "Steven D'Aprano" <
steve+comp.lang.pyt...@pearwood.info> wrote:

> I'm seeing this annoying practice more and more often. Even for trivial
> pieces of text, a few lines, people post screenshots instead of copying
> the code.
>
> Where has this meme come from? It seems to be one which inconveniences
> *everyone* involved:
>
> - for the sender, instead of a simple copy and paste, they have to take a
> screen shot, possibly trim the image to remove any bits of the screen
> they don't want to show, attach it to their email or upload it to an
> image hosting site;
>
> - for the receiver, you are reliant on a forum which doesn't strip
> attachments, or displays externally hosted images; the visually impaired
> are excluded from using a screen reader; and nobody can copy or edit the
> given text.
>
> It is as if people are deliberately inconveniencing themselves in order
> to inconvenience the people they are asking to help them.
>
> With the exception of one *exceedingly* overrated advantage, namely the
> ability to annotate the image with coloured lines and circles and
> squiggles or other graphics (which most people don't bother to do), this
> seems to me to be 100% counter-productive for everyone involved. Why has
> it spread and why do people keep doing it?
>
> I don't want to be the old man yelling "Get Of My Lawn!" to the cool
> kids, but is this just another sign of the downward spiral of programming
> talent? Convince me that there is *some* justification for this practice.
> Even a tiny one.
>
> (The day a programmer posts a WAV file of themselves reading their code
> out aloud, is the day I turn my modem off and leave the internet forever.)
>
>
>
> --
> Steve
>
> --
> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
>
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Re: [OT] Dutch Reach [was Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?]

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Tue, 30 Jan 2018 09:39:26 -0700, Ian Kelly wrote:

> Also, I just wanted to add that if you're going to use the side mirror
> then you need to watch it for a couple of seconds rather than a quick
> glance. Most people's mirrors are not particularly well adjusted to
> capture the car's blind spot, which is exactly where an oncoming cyclist
> would be. A blind spot that can fit an entire car inside of it is
> enormous compared to the size of a bicycle.

How slow is the bike travelling that it takes a couple of seconds to 
cross the length of a car? If they're travelling that slowly, they're not 
so much going to collide with the door as gently nudge it.

Of course you should do more than a quick glance, it should be a proper 
look[1], but surely in a couple of seconds a cyclist could easily travel 
three or four car lengths.




[1] You're not just looking out for cyclists, but traffic, since you're 
stepping out into traffic yourself and presumably would prefer not to 
have some wayward car take your door off, and you with it.



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Re: [OT] Dutch Reach [was Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?]

[Grant Edwards]

On 2018-01-30, Ian Kelly  wrote:
>
>> Unless the bike lane is between the "parallel parking lane" and the
>> curb[*], in which case it's the passenger side doors that are used to
>> catch bicycles rather than the driver's side doors.
>>
>> [*] This seems to be increasingly common here in the Minneapolis /
>> St. Paul area
>
> This seems like it would tend to make the "dooring" problem worse,
> since people are not generally accustomed to using caution when
> opening their door toward the curb rather than the street.

That may be mitigated by the high percentage of cars in US cities that
have no passengers.

-- 
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  at   along and try NOT to think
  gmail.comabout your INTESTINES being
   almost FORTY YARDS LONG!!

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Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[Gregory Ewing]

On Mon, 29 Jan 2018 22:41:36 + (UTC), Steven D'Aprano
 declaimed the following:

Its the component of the router that actually handles the 
telecommunications side of things. Legend has it that once upon a time 
they were a stand alone device.


Even more distant legend suggests that modems existed before
the concept of a router was even thought of. Hard to imagine,
I know!

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Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[Jugurtha Hadjar]

On 01/29/2018 03:48 PM, alister via Python-list wrote:

On Mon, 29 Jan 2018 15:20:06 +0100, Jugurtha Hadjar wrote:


On 01/28/2018 04:43 PM, Skip Montanaro wrote:

I've never been a Windows user, but at my current job, Windows is core
to just about everything, so I am forced to use it for a lot of stuff
(Outlook, SQL Server, Excel, etc).

I was hired at a startup which made a good impression on me and I was
eager to start working. I checked in for my first day, signed the
paperwork, then the CTO showed me around and told me "Here's your
laptop, you can install Windows and I'll check in with you later". Life
started draining out of my body and my mind was racing in all directions
before he even finished his sentence. I felt tricked: I was hired based
on a test and the file I've received was a *.tar.gz* and it made me
happy because I assumed they were a NIX shop..

I was considering how I should go about quitting gracefully. I have
stopped using Windows in 2008 for psychological reasons for it made me
really anxious, irritable, angry, and tense to the point of abusing
hardware with low kicks and punches which was not very healthy or sane.
It was only when I switched OS that this behavior stopped. There was no
way I would be going back to my bully.

The CTO then said "Sorry.. I meant Ubuntu." and seeing my pale face, he
said in a reassuring tone "Don't be afraid, there are no Windows
machines here." which brought me back to life.

I hope to be as brave as you some day.

Any Vacancies
whatever they do I am sure I can learn :-)





We're hiring all the good (technical and human side) people we can 
find/afford. It's a small startup that helps its clients improve 
business using machine learning. We're in Algiers, Algeria and Paris, 
France.



--
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Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[Peter Pearson]

On Mon, 29 Jan 2018 14:46:59 -0500, Dennis Lee Bieber wrote:
> On 29 Jan 2018 17:26:32 GMT, Peter Pearson 
> declaimed the following:
>
>>
>>In 1964, the IBM exhibit at the World's Fair in New York demonstrated
>>a system that read dates that visitors wrote by hand.  (You were
>>supposed to write your date of birth, and the system then printed
>>the New York Times's headline for that date.)
>
>   Was it somehow scanning dates from paper or cards, or was it using some
> sort of touch sensor input (pressure tablet, or a pen in a harness with
> position sensors).
>
>   The first would be OCR proper, while the second is what many PDAs (and
> some tablets) rely upon. The second provides actually stroke vector
> information on how the characters are formed, which is more reliable than
> just seeing pixel transitions and trying to match characters to them.

We wrote our dates of birth on paper or punch cards (I forget which)
with an ordinary pen.  We handed the papers (or cards) to someone who
fed them into a machine, which printed slips of paper that were handed
to us as we exited.  According to the promotional displays, our writing
was examined optically; one poster showed a scan path that resembled
an extremely prolate cycloid following along the handwritten line.

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Re: [OT] Dutch Reach [was Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?]

[Ian Kelly]

On Tue, Jan 30, 2018 at 9:24 AM, Grant Edwards
 wrote:
> On 2018-01-30, Steven D'Aprano  wrote:
>> On Tue, 30 Jan 2018 15:48:29 +, Matt Wheeler wrote:
>>
>>> Checking the side mirrors isn't particularly helpful advice if you're
>>> sitting in any seat other than the driver's seat, however.
>>
>> That's a fair point.
>>
>> But it really only applies to those sitting on the driver's side in the
>> back seat. On the passenger's side, you open the door towards the curb,
>> out of the way of both cyclists and on-coming traffic.
>
> Unless the bike lane is between the "parallel parking lane" and the
> curb[*], in which case it's the passenger side doors that are used to
> catch bicycles rather than the driver's side doors.
>
> [*] This seems to be increasingly common here in the Minneapolis /
> St. Paul area

This seems like it would tend to make the "dooring" problem worse,
since people are not generally accustomed to using caution when
opening their door toward the curb rather than the street.

Also, I just wanted to add that if you're going to use the side mirror
then you need to watch it for a couple of seconds rather than a quick
glance. Most people's mirrors are not particularly well adjusted to
capture the car's blind spot, which is exactly where an oncoming
cyclist would be. A blind spot that can fit an entire car inside of it
is enormous compared to the size of a bicycle.
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Re: [OT] Dutch Reach [was Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?]

[MRAB]

On 2018-01-30 15:39, Steven D'Aprano wrote:

On Tue, 30 Jan 2018 05:48:15 -0800, Rustom Mody wrote:

[...]

Ah, yes, the Dutch Reach. That would be like the French Pox (which
isn't French), the Spanish Flu (that didn't start in Spain), the
Jerusalem artichoke (which is neither an artichoke nor from Jerusalem),
and the turkey (the bird, which has nothing to do with Turkey, the
country).

This technique is neither taught nor commonly used used by the Dutch:
apparently some Americans decided that because the Netherlands has a
lot of cyclists, they'll say its Dutch.


reference please


The onus should be on those who claim that the technique actually is used
by the Dutch. Anecdotally, the Dutch people I've spoken to on the
Internet had no idea that this technique even existed.


Do we know of anyone who's Dutch and frequents a Python newsgroup? :-)

[snip]
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Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[Rhodri James]

On 30/01/18 16:47, alister via Python-list wrote:

The British TV show QI seemed to think this is actually part of the Dutch
driving test although they have been known to make mistakes


It has to be noted that the QI Elves did not do particularly well in 
Only Connect...


--
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Re: [OT] Text as digitization [was Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?]

[Grant Edwards]

On 2018-01-30, Steven D'Aprano  wrote:

> We're talking about *programmers* here -- if they can't cope with the 
> highly stylised textual medium in which they work, they're going to 
> really struggle to, you know, actually program.

Well, to be fair, many of them do (struggle to actually program, that
is).

Spend any time at all reading PHP forums and you'll despair for
humanity.  Not only are they trying to build airports and radios out
of bamboo and twine, they don't even know how to split cane or tie a
knot.

-- 
Grant Edwards   grant.b.edwardsYow! WHO sees a BEACH BUNNY
  at   sobbing on a SHAG RUG?!
  gmail.com

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Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[alister via Python-list]

On Tue, 30 Jan 2018 07:28:58 +, Steven D'Aprano wrote:

> On Mon, 29 Jan 2018 21:32:11 -0800, Rustom Mody wrote:
> 
>> On Sunday, January 28, 2018 at 8:37:11 PM UTC+5:30, Steven D'Aprano
>> wrote:
>>> I'm seeing this annoying practice more and more often. Even for
>>> trivial pieces of text, a few lines, people post screenshots instead
>>> of copying the code.
>>> 
>>> Where has this meme come from? It seems to be one which inconveniences
>>> *everyone* involved:
>> 
>> Have you heard of the “Dutch Reach¨?
>> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/news/the-dutch-reach-how-opening-car-
> door-like-the-dutch-could-save-lives-cycling/
> 
> Ah, yes, the Dutch Reach. That would be like the French Pox (which isn't
> French), the Spanish Flu (that didn't start in Spain), the Jerusalem
> artichoke (which is neither an artichoke nor from Jerusalem), and the
> turkey (the bird, which has nothing to do with Turkey, the country).
> 
> This technique is neither taught nor commonly used used by the Dutch:
> apparently some Americans decided that because the Netherlands has a lot
> of cyclists, they'll say its Dutch.
> 
The British TV show QI seemed to think this is actually part of the Dutch 
driving test although they have been known to make mistakes

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dooring
> 
> So let me see if I understand the logic...
> 
> Rather than teach people to *explicitly* check their mirror to make sure
> it is safe before opening the car door, teach them a difficult, awkward
> maneuver which they're guaranteed to stop using the second the driving
> test is over, that merely points their head more-or-less vaguely in the
> right direction to *maybe* notice on-coming cyclists *if and only if*
> they're actually paying attention.
> 
> I can see this falls under the problem solving technique, "We must do
> something, this is something, therefore we must do it!"
> 
on this I can agree with you.
Personally I tend to "crack" the door a little & then look down the road 
Before opening fully. i am pretty sure I also (at least subconsciously) 
check the mirror.
Then again many* cyclists tend to be in the blind spot, dressed in dark 
clothing & have no lights & ride with zero regard to the rules of the 
road.

> The sorts of people who can't remember to check their mirror before
> opening the car door aren't the sort who will remember to use this
> awkward technique. And for those who can remember to do so, it is
> simpler and more effective to explicitly check your mirror (as the Dutch
> actually do).
> 
> 
>> Presumably it goes beyond the 'inconvenience' of images-instead-of-text
>> to the saving-of-lives…
> 
> I have no idea what connection you think is between this and emailing
> pictures of source code in place of source code.

* not all, some do appear have a desire to live.



-- 
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thin to cultivate.
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Re: [OT] Dutch Reach [was Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?]

[Grant Edwards]

On 2018-01-30, Steven D'Aprano  wrote:
> On Tue, 30 Jan 2018 15:48:29 +, Matt Wheeler wrote:
>
>> Checking the side mirrors isn't particularly helpful advice if you're
>> sitting in any seat other than the driver's seat, however.
>
> That's a fair point.
>
> But it really only applies to those sitting on the driver's side in the 
> back seat. On the passenger's side, you open the door towards the curb, 
> out of the way of both cyclists and on-coming traffic.

Unless the bike lane is between the "parallel parking lane" and the
curb[*], in which case it's the passenger side doors that are used to
catch bicycles rather than the driver's side doors.

[*] This seems to be increasingly common here in the Minneapolis /
St. Paul area

-- 
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  at   a salami!
  gmail.com

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Re: [OT] Text as digitization [was Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?]

[Chris Angelico]

On Wed, Jan 31, 2018 at 3:09 AM, Steven D'Aprano
 wrote:
> On Tue, 30 Jan 2018 05:48:15 -0800, Rustom Mody wrote:
>
>> Text is a highly stylized unnatural medium
> [chomp]
>
>> That people who have not been cultured in a certain way can do
>> aggravating things like talking with pics instead of text — I wont
>> dispute That people who have gone from the nature to nurture process
>> conveniently forget this process is more aggravating
>
> I'm sorry, I don't understand this paragraph.

I think that paragraph is his demonstration that text can, if properly
crafted, be as useless as an image.

*ducking for cover*

ChrisA
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Re: [OT] Dutch Reach [was Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?]

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Tue, 30 Jan 2018 15:48:29 +, Matt Wheeler wrote:

> Checking the side mirrors isn't particularly helpful advice if you're
> sitting in any seat other than the driver's seat, however.

That's a fair point.

But it really only applies to those sitting on the driver's side in the 
back seat. On the passenger's side, you open the door towards the curb, 
out of the way of both cyclists and on-coming traffic.

For the minority of passengers sitting in the rear on the driver's side, 
you just have to be extra careful about opening the door and stepping out 
into the road, not just for the sake of cyclists, but also for the sake 
of not being side-swiped by a car or truck as you step into the road.



-- 
Steve

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[OT] Text as digitization [was Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?]

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Tue, 30 Jan 2018 05:48:15 -0800, Rustom Mody wrote:

> Text is a highly stylized unnatural medium

Hmmm. I think it is no more "unnatural" than whale songs or the extremely 
formalised dancing rituals of birds or any other animal communication.

Our species just takes this communication to a higher level of 
information content -- but that's a matter of degree, not kind.

But okay, for the sake of the argument, it's highly stylised (like formal 
logic, mathematical reasoning, filling in your tax return, and Kabuki 
theatre). How is that relevant?

We're talking about *programmers* here -- if they can't cope with the 
highly stylised textual medium in which they work, they're going to 
really struggle to, you know, actually program.

And as for being unnatural -- that would be like electric lights, 
antibiotics, eyeglasses, and dentistry. Still not seeing the downside 
here. The natural state of humanity is to spend the majority of your life 
being cold and hungry, hot and hungry, or terrified, before dying young.


> Its an extreme digitization
> of something (do you remember?) called handwriting… 

Of course I remember handwriting. I still use handwriting.

Typed text has evolved from handwriting, via printing. What's your point?


> That people who have not been cultured in a certain way can do
> aggravating things like talking with pics instead of text — I wont
> dispute That people who have gone from the nature to nurture process
> conveniently forget this process is more aggravating

I'm sorry, I don't understand this paragraph.


-- 
Steve

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Re: [OT] Dutch Reach [was Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?]

[Matt Wheeler]

On Tue, 30 Jan 2018 at 15:39 Steven D'Aprano <
steve+comp.lang.pyt...@pearwood.info> wrote:

> This effectively and completely undermines the supposed claim that this
> technique makes it *automatic* to look behind you for on-coming cyclists.
> That simply isn't the case. Whether you use the arm closest or furthest
> from the door, you still need to make a conscious effort to either look
> over your shoulder (where your view will be obstructed by the car pillar
> by the door), or consciously check your side mirror.
>

Checking the side mirrors isn't particularly helpful advice if you're
sitting in any seat other than the driver's seat, however.
-- 

--
Matt Wheeler
http://funkyh.at
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[OT] Dutch Reach [was Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?]

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Tue, 30 Jan 2018 05:48:15 -0800, Rustom Mody wrote:

[...]
>> Ah, yes, the Dutch Reach. That would be like the French Pox (which
>> isn't French), the Spanish Flu (that didn't start in Spain), the
>> Jerusalem artichoke (which is neither an artichoke nor from Jerusalem),
>> and the turkey (the bird, which has nothing to do with Turkey, the
>> country).
>> 
>> This technique is neither taught nor commonly used used by the Dutch:
>> apparently some Americans decided that because the Netherlands has a
>> lot of cyclists, they'll say its Dutch.
> 
> reference please

The onus should be on those who claim that the technique actually is used 
by the Dutch. Anecdotally, the Dutch people I've spoken to on the 
Internet had no idea that this technique even existed.

(I happened to know about this because this week's "QI" on the BBC 
happened to mention it, and that show is very popular among the Dutch. 
There's been quite a number of comments on Reddit from Dutch people 
complaining about the QI Elves' lack of fact checking regarding this, as 
well as machine vision.)

Even the organisation who invented the term acknowledge that lots of 
people, *especially* Dutch people, take issue with their claim that the 
technique is required by Dutch law, is taught in Dutch schools, and is 
routinely practiced by the Dutch.

Their answer? To paraphrase their rambling explanation here:

https://www.dutchreach.org/is-the-dutch-reach-really-dutch/

Trust us, it was required by NL law decades ago but isn't
any longer now, it was never given a name and so even though
it is really commonplace and everyone in NL does it, nobody
remembers doing it. And besides, its only young Dutch people
who say that nobody uses this technique there, what do they
know? Old people use it all the time.

(Not a direct quote.)

Yeah, colour me skeptical that this actually ever was a commonplace 
practice in the NL, or anywhere else for that matter.

There's an easy way to find out whether this is commonplace in the NLs. 
Look at Dutch movies and television. How do the characters open their car 
doors?

By the way, anyone who actually has a car: I encourage you to sit in 
driver's seat of your car and try out this "Dutch Reach" maneuver for 
yourself. If you do, you will probably have the same experience that I 
did when I tried it:

It is awkward and clumsy to reach across and open the door with your 
opposite hand, but most importantly, doing so does NOT cause your upper 
body to twist around enough to automatically look behind the car for on-
coming cyclists. I estimate that my head and upper torso rotated no more 
than about 30 degree from "straight ahead".

This effectively and completely undermines the supposed claim that this 
technique makes it *automatic* to look behind you for on-coming cyclists. 
That simply isn't the case. Whether you use the arm closest or furthest 
from the door, you still need to make a conscious effort to either look 
over your shoulder (where your view will be obstructed by the car pillar 
by the door), or consciously check your side mirror.

Guess which one is both easier and more effective?


-- 
Steve

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Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[Rustom Mody]

On Tuesday, January 30, 2018 at 1:02:12 PM UTC+5:30, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> On Mon, 29 Jan 2018 21:32:11 -0800, Rustom Mody wrote:
> 
> > On Sunday, January 28, 2018 at 8:37:11 PM UTC+5:30, Steven D'Aprano
> > wrote:
> >> I'm seeing this annoying practice more and more often. Even for trivial
> >> pieces of text, a few lines, people post screenshots instead of copying
> >> the code.
> >> 
> >> Where has this meme come from? It seems to be one which inconveniences
> >> *everyone* involved:
> > 
> > Have you heard of the “Dutch Reach¨?
> > http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/news/the-dutch-reach-how-opening-car-
> door-like-the-dutch-could-save-lives-cycling/
> 
> Ah, yes, the Dutch Reach. That would be like the French Pox (which isn't 
> French), the Spanish Flu (that didn't start in Spain), the Jerusalem 
> artichoke (which is neither an artichoke nor from Jerusalem), and the 
> turkey (the bird, which has nothing to do with Turkey, the country).
> 
> This technique is neither taught nor commonly used used by the Dutch: 
> apparently some Americans decided that because the Netherlands has a lot 
> of cyclists, they'll say its Dutch.

reference please But before we wander far afield OT please also read below
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dooring
> 
> So let me see if I understand the logic... 
> 
> Rather than teach people to *explicitly* check their mirror to make sure 
> it is safe before opening the car door, teach them a difficult, awkward 
> maneuver which they're guaranteed to stop using the second the driving 
> test is over, that merely points their head more-or-less vaguely in the 
> right direction to *maybe* notice on-coming cyclists *if and only if* 
> they're actually paying attention.

You have interpreted my example/analogy/allegory in the opposite sense from the 
intention.  The example is really far OT for this list so let me back up the abc
hierarchy:


> 
> I can see this falls under the problem solving technique, "We must do 
> something, this is something, therefore we must do it!"

…to wit: Small changes of convenience expecially when habitualized can yield 
large benefits
In this (OT) case using the 'wrong hand' can save lives

If this example does not work for you lets not labour it but find others that 
do!

> 
> The sorts of people who can't remember to check their mirror before 
> opening the car door aren't the sort who will remember to use this 
> awkward technique. And for those who can remember to do so, it is simpler 
> and more effective to explicitly check your mirror (as the Dutch actually 
> do).
> 
> 
> > Presumably it goes beyond the 'inconvenience' of images-instead-of-text
> > to the saving-of-lives…
> 
> I have no idea what connection you think is between this and emailing 
> pictures of source code in place of source code.

There is this slippery slope:
1. Action A is suboptimal (only makes sense wrt action B)
2. Action A is silly
3. You are doing a silly action A
4. You are silly for doing action A
5. You are silly
6. You are  

How close you are to 6 is for you to say
What I want to say is I'd like to be closer to 1

Text is a highly stylized unnatural medium
Its an extreme digitization of something (do you remember?) called handwriting…
At least I remember… being an unwilling school boy… using something called 
fountain pens… filled with something called ink… that for some reason had 
greater affinity for our school uniforms than for our notebooks

That people who have not been cultured in a certain way can do aggravating 
things
like talking with pics instead of text — I wont dispute
That people who have gone from the nature to nurture process conveniently forget
this process is more aggravating
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Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Mon, 29 Jan 2018 21:32:11 -0800, Rustom Mody wrote:

> On Sunday, January 28, 2018 at 8:37:11 PM UTC+5:30, Steven D'Aprano
> wrote:
>> I'm seeing this annoying practice more and more often. Even for trivial
>> pieces of text, a few lines, people post screenshots instead of copying
>> the code.
>> 
>> Where has this meme come from? It seems to be one which inconveniences
>> *everyone* involved:
> 
> Have you heard of the “Dutch Reach¨?
> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/news/the-dutch-reach-how-opening-car-
door-like-the-dutch-could-save-lives-cycling/

Ah, yes, the Dutch Reach. That would be like the French Pox (which isn't 
French), the Spanish Flu (that didn't start in Spain), the Jerusalem 
artichoke (which is neither an artichoke nor from Jerusalem), and the 
turkey (the bird, which has nothing to do with Turkey, the country).

This technique is neither taught nor commonly used used by the Dutch: 
apparently some Americans decided that because the Netherlands has a lot 
of cyclists, they'll say its Dutch.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dooring

So let me see if I understand the logic... 

Rather than teach people to *explicitly* check their mirror to make sure 
it is safe before opening the car door, teach them a difficult, awkward 
maneuver which they're guaranteed to stop using the second the driving 
test is over, that merely points their head more-or-less vaguely in the 
right direction to *maybe* notice on-coming cyclists *if and only if* 
they're actually paying attention.

I can see this falls under the problem solving technique, "We must do 
something, this is something, therefore we must do it!"

The sorts of people who can't remember to check their mirror before 
opening the car door aren't the sort who will remember to use this 
awkward technique. And for those who can remember to do so, it is simpler 
and more effective to explicitly check your mirror (as the Dutch actually 
do).


> Presumably it goes beyond the 'inconvenience' of images-instead-of-text
> to the saving-of-lives…

I have no idea what connection you think is between this and emailing 
pictures of source code in place of source code.


-- 
Steve

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Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[Rustom Mody]

On Sunday, January 28, 2018 at 8:37:11 PM UTC+5:30, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> I'm seeing this annoying practice more and more often. Even for trivial 
> pieces of text, a few lines, people post screenshots instead of copying 
> the code.
> 
> Where has this meme come from? It seems to be one which inconveniences 
> *everyone* involved:

Have you heard of the “Dutch Reach¨?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/news/the-dutch-reach-how-opening-car-door-like-the-dutch-could-save-lives-cycling/

Presumably it goes beyond the 'inconvenience' of images-instead-of-text to the
saving-of-lives…
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Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[Chris Angelico]

On Tue, Jan 30, 2018 at 12:56 PM, Abdur-Rahmaan Janhangeer
 wrote:
>
> XD since we were elaborating on the reasons why users use screenshot, well i 
> was elaborating why users use screenshot, not me. those are some reasons i 
> came across being admin in some whatsapp groups and python lists (where the 
> user complains of his attachments not showing).
>

Sorry, I was using the generic "you", rather than pointing the finger
specifically at you. That was a bit unclear in my post - mea culpa.

ChrisA
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Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[Abdur-Rahmaan Janhangeer]

XD since we were elaborating on the reasons why users use screenshot, well
i was elaborating why users use screenshot, not me. those are some reasons
i came across being admin in some whatsapp groups and python lists (where
the user complains of his attachments not showing).


Garanti
sans virus. www.avast.com

<#DAB4FAD8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2>

On Tue, Jan 30, 2018 at 5:13 AM, Chris Angelico  wrote:

> On Tue, Jan 30, 2018 at 11:40 AM, Abdur-Rahmaan Janhangeer
>  wrote:
> > well maybe screenshot of shell sessions to show varying formatted test
> > cases might be valid (like the increasingly popular practise of coding py
> > on android)
>
> Maybe, but that isn't code.
>
> > also, sreenshot sources tend to be syntax colored which might be easier
> to
> > read.
>
> No. The syntax highlighting comes from the code, so I should be able
> to paste your code into my editor and see it in colour. No benefit to
> seeing it in YOUR colours, which may not be helpful to me.
>
> > ease of access is the culprit !
>
> I find that hard to believe... you're saying it's actually easier to
> screenshot a text editor than to copy and paste?
>
> ChrisA
> --
> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
>
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Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[Chris Angelico]

On Tue, Jan 30, 2018 at 11:40 AM, Abdur-Rahmaan Janhangeer
 wrote:
> well maybe screenshot of shell sessions to show varying formatted test
> cases might be valid (like the increasingly popular practise of coding py
> on android)

Maybe, but that isn't code.

> also, sreenshot sources tend to be syntax colored which might be easier to
> read.

No. The syntax highlighting comes from the code, so I should be able
to paste your code into my editor and see it in colour. No benefit to
seeing it in YOUR colours, which may not be helpful to me.

> ease of access is the culprit !

I find that hard to believe... you're saying it's actually easier to
screenshot a text editor than to copy and paste?

ChrisA
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Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[Abdur-Rahmaan Janhangeer]

well maybe screenshot of shell sessions to show varying formatted test
cases might be valid (like the increasingly popular practise of coding py
on android)

also, sreenshot sources tend to be syntax colored which might be easier to
read.

overall it is a bad idea as you won't have the full code if the code is
long unless you are on android with the scroll screenshot option.

ease of access is the culprit !

Abdur-Rahmaan Janhangeer
https://abdurrahmaanjanhangeer.wordpress.com

On 28 Jan 2018 19:08, "Steven D'Aprano" <
steve+comp.lang.pyt...@pearwood.info> wrote:

> I'm seeing this annoying practice more and more often. Even for trivial
> pieces of text, a few lines, people post screenshots instead of copying
> the code.
>
> Where has this meme come from? It seems to be one which inconveniences
> *everyone* involved:
>
> - for the sender, instead of a simple copy and paste, they have to take a
> screen shot, possibly trim the image to remove any bits of the screen
> they don't want to show, attach it to their email or upload it to an
> image hosting site;
>
> - for the receiver, you are reliant on a forum which doesn't strip
> attachments, or displays externally hosted images; the visually impaired
> are excluded from using a screen reader; and nobody can copy or edit the
> given text.
>
> It is as if people are deliberately inconveniencing themselves in order
> to inconvenience the people they are asking to help them.
>
> With the exception of one *exceedingly* overrated advantage, namely the
> ability to annotate the image with coloured lines and circles and
> squiggles or other graphics (which most people don't bother to do), this
> seems to me to be 100% counter-productive for everyone involved. Why has
> it spread and why do people keep doing it?
>
> I don't want to be the old man yelling "Get Of My Lawn!" to the cool
> kids, but is this just another sign of the downward spiral of programming
> talent? Convince me that there is *some* justification for this practice.
> Even a tiny one.
>
> (The day a programmer posts a WAV file of themselves reading their code
> out aloud, is the day I turn my modem off and leave the internet forever.)
>
>
>
> --
> Steve
>
> --
> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
>
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Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[Ethan Furman]

On 01/29/2018 02:41 PM, Steven D'Aprano wrote:

On Mon, 29 Jan 2018 11:43:36 -0800, John Ladasky wrote:

On Sunday, January 28, 2018 at 7:07:11 AM UTC-8, Steven D'Aprano wrote:



(The day a programmer posts a WAV file of themselves reading their code
out aloud, is the day I turn my modem off and leave the internet
forever.)


What's a... modem?


Its the component of the router that actually handles the
telecommunications side of things. Legend has it that once upon a time
they were a stand alone device.


Mine was never stand-alone.  I always had to prop it up with some books.

--
~Ethan~

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Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Mon, 29 Jan 2018 17:34:34 +, John Gordon wrote:

[...]
> The displayed filename in File Explorer was input.txt -- meaning that
> the real filename was actually input.txt.txt, because File Explorer
> shows file extensions as a separate column.
> 
> Without this screenshot, we would have had only the user's (incorrect)
> assertion that the file existed, and no way to diagnose the true issue.

No way to diagnose it -- apart from asking the programmer to run the DOS 
command `dir` in the directory and copy and paste the file listing.

Or os.listdir() in Python.


> Granted, this was an environment issue and not a code issue, but I can
> imagine situations where the same sort of thing could apply to code.

The only time a programmer MUST include a screen shot is when they are 
trying to diagnose a problem with graphical output that can't easily and 
accurately be described in words. And that's a screen shot of the 
*output*, not the code.

It MAY be useful to include a screen shot of system crashes where the 
error message is impossible to copy and too long and complex to 
transcribe.

Or possibly when trying to ask for help with your GUI IDE or editor, 
although even then most questions can be described in words.

So I don't quite rule out the possibility of programmers needing to take 
screen shots at all. I'm not a troglodyte :-)

But what I do rule out is the necessity and usefulness of programmers 
taking screen shots of their *code* to ask for help with program logic or 
solving errors (with the very rare possible exception of especially 
difficult to solve syntax errors).


-- 
Steve

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Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Mon, 29 Jan 2018 11:43:36 -0800, John Ladasky wrote:

> On Sunday, January 28, 2018 at 7:07:11 AM UTC-8, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
>>
>> (The day a programmer posts a WAV file of themselves reading their code
>> out aloud, is the day I turn my modem off and leave the internet
>> forever.)
> 
> What's a... modem?


Its the component of the router that actually handles the 
telecommunications side of things. Legend has it that once upon a time 
they were a stand alone device.


-- 
Steve

-- 
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Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[Grant Edwards]

On 2018-01-29, D'Arcy Cain  wrote:

> Modems are still around.  They have simply evolved from the 300 baud
> acoustic coupler.

Those did _not_ work well with "trimline" style phones, but you could
get by if you wrapped it in a couple towels, stuffed it in a small
cooler, and kept the TV volume low.  Really.

-- 
Grant Edwards   grant.b.edwardsYow! The FALAFEL SANDWICH
  at   lands on my HEAD and I
  gmail.combecome a VEGETARIAN ...

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Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[Michelle Konzack]

Am 2018-01-29 hackte John Ladasky in die Tasten:
> On Sunday, January 28, 2018 at 7:07:11 AM UTC-8, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
>>
>> (The day a programmer posts a WAV file of themselves reading their code
>> out aloud, is the day I turn my modem off and leave the internet
>> forever.)
>
> What's a... modem?

Something I have in my ThinkPad T400 and let me access
my Homenetwork without going over the Internet...

Hehehe, ThinkPads are the more advanced Laptops...
PS/2 Mouse/Keyboard, LPT with Centronics Cabel, ...
All with a Dualcore 2,27GHz and 4 GByte of memory (8 GByte
upgrade in sight) because of memory hungry Debian Stretch!

Oh, I can even exchange my DVD-RW against a second HDD on
the fly without shuting down the Laptop...

ROTFL!

All for only 114€ on german eBay.

Thanks in avance

-- 
Michelle KonzackMiila ITSystems @ TDnet
GNU/Linux Developer 00372-54541400

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Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[D'Arcy Cain]

On 01/29/2018 01:43 PM, John Ladasky wrote:
> On Sunday, January 28, 2018 at 7:07:11 AM UTC-8, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
>>
>> (The day a programmer posts a WAV file of themselves reading their code 
>> out aloud, is the day I turn my modem off and leave the internet forever.)
> 
> What's a... modem?

That would be a MOdulator-DEModulator device.  It's what you plug your
DSL phone line or cable coax into.  At one time it simply plugged into a
regular phone line but there aren't many of those around any more.

You may be connecting directly to a provider's Wifi AP but 90% of the
people still use modems.  And even if you connect directly to an AP that
device still needs to talk to a modem so you are still connected to a
modem at some point.

Modems are still around.  They have simply evolved from the 300 baud
acoustic coupler.

-- 
D'Arcy J.M. Cain
Vybe Networks Inc.
http://www.VybeNetworks.com/
IM:da...@vex.net VoIP: sip:da...@vybenetworks.com
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Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[eryk sun]

On Mon, Jan 29, 2018 at 7:43 PM, John Ladasky
 wrote:
> On Sunday, January 28, 2018 at 7:07:11 AM UTC-8, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
>>
>> (The day a programmer posts a WAV file of themselves reading their code
>> out aloud, is the day I turn my modem off and leave the internet forever.)
>
> What's a... modem?

A modem is a MOulator-DEMmodulator. The idea is to transmit a baseband
signal by modulating the amplitude, frequency, or phase of a carrier
signal. At the receiving end, the signal is demodulated back to
baseband. It's a common technique in communication systems (e.g. DSL,
cable, wireless modems -- even optical modems). In popular culture,
people tend to think of telephone-system modems that were common in
the 1980s and 90s.
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Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[eryk sun]

On Mon, Jan 29, 2018 at 5:34 PM, John Gordon  wrote:
>
> The displayed filename in File Explorer was input.txt -- meaning that the
> real filename was actually input.txt.txt, because File Explorer shows file
> extensions as a separate column.

One of the first things I do after creating an account is to modify
Explorer to show all files and not hide extensions. Windows 10 makes
this more discoverable. In the settings page that enables developer
mode, you can configure the system to show file extensions, hidden and
system files, empty drives, the full path in Explorer's title bar, and
the start-menu option to run a program as a different user.
-- 
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Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[Chris Angelico]

On Tue, Jan 30, 2018 at 6:43 AM, John Ladasky
 wrote:
> On Sunday, January 28, 2018 at 7:07:11 AM UTC-8, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
>>
>> (The day a programmer posts a WAV file of themselves reading their code
>> out aloud, is the day I turn my modem off and leave the internet forever.)
>
> What's a... modem?

A device for turning good code into line noise.

Synonym: maintenance-programmer.

ChrisA
-- 
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Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[John Ladasky]

On Sunday, January 28, 2018 at 7:07:11 AM UTC-8, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
>
> (The day a programmer posts a WAV file of themselves reading their code 
> out aloud, is the day I turn my modem off and leave the internet forever.)

What's a... modem?
-- 
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Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[John Gordon]

In  Steven D'Aprano 
 writes:

> I'm seeing this annoying practice more and more often. Even for trivial 
> pieces of text, a few lines, people post screenshots instead of copying 
> the code.

In some (perhaps rare) cases, a screenshot can provide useful independent
verification.

Such a screenshot recently helped me diagnose an issue in a stackoverflow
post.  A user was having trouble with some code that opens a file, and he
posted a screenshot of the code and a screenshot of a Windows File Explorer
window containing the desired file.  The File Explorer screenshot clearly
contained the desired file (named input.txt), and he was mystified as to
why the code was claiming the file did not exist.

The displayed filename in File Explorer was input.txt -- meaning that the
real filename was actually input.txt.txt, because File Explorer shows file
extensions as a separate column.

Without this screenshot, we would have had only the user's (incorrect)
assertion that the file existed, and no way to diagnose the true issue.

Granted, this was an environment issue and not a code issue, but I can
imagine situations where the same sort of thing could apply to code.

-- 
John Gordon   A is for Amy, who fell down the stairs
gor...@panix.com  B is for Basil, assaulted by bears
-- Edward Gorey, "The Gashlycrumb Tinies"

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Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[Peter Pearson]

On Sun, 28 Jan 2018 20:24:55 -0800, Dan Stromberg  wrote:
[snip]
>
> Is it really true that OCR appeared long before Neural Networks
> (NN's)?  I first heard of NN's in the 80's, but OCR more like the
> 90's.

In 1964, the IBM exhibit at the World's Fair in New York demonstrated
a system that read dates that visitors wrote by hand.  (You were
supposed to write your date of birth, and the system then printed
the New York Times's headline for that date.)

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Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[Rhodri James]

On 29/01/18 04:29, Dan Stromberg wrote:

On Sun, Jan 28, 2018 at 8:24 PM, Dan Stromberg  wrote:

If an NN can ... play go on a level that can beat the best human in the
world


Correcting myself: I think Google's AlphaGo used more than one NN,
plus perhaps a little traditional reading algorithm.  So I probably
should have said "If NN's can ...".


No, you should have said "If NNs can..." without the grocer's apostrophe :-)

(Well, it seems to be that sort of thread.)

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Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[alister via Python-list]

On Mon, 29 Jan 2018 12:17:39 +1300, Gregory Ewing wrote:

> Steven D'Aprano wrote:
>> (The day a programmer posts a WAV file of themselves reading their code
>> out aloud, is the day I turn my modem off and leave the internet
>> forever.)
> 
> Shh! Don't give them ideas!

just wait, once they realise you cant send pictures to a text only news 
group they take the screen shot, print it place it on a wooden table*, 
photograph it & then convert the JPeg to base64 encoding so they can 
paste it in!


* credit to thedailywtf.com


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Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[alister via Python-list]

On Mon, 29 Jan 2018 15:20:06 +0100, Jugurtha Hadjar wrote:

> On 01/28/2018 04:43 PM, Skip Montanaro wrote:
>> I've never been a Windows user, but at my current job, Windows is core
>> to just about everything, so I am forced to use it for a lot of stuff
>> (Outlook, SQL Server, Excel, etc).
> 
> I was hired at a startup which made a good impression on me and I was
> eager to start working. I checked in for my first day, signed the
> paperwork, then the CTO showed me around and told me "Here's your
> laptop, you can install Windows and I'll check in with you later". Life
> started draining out of my body and my mind was racing in all directions
> before he even finished his sentence. I felt tricked: I was hired based
> on a test and the file I've received was a *.tar.gz* and it made me
> happy because I assumed they were a NIX shop..
> 
> I was considering how I should go about quitting gracefully. I have
> stopped using Windows in 2008 for psychological reasons for it made me
> really anxious, irritable, angry, and tense to the point of abusing
> hardware with low kicks and punches which was not very healthy or sane.
> It was only when I switched OS that this behavior stopped. There was no
> way I would be going back to my bully.
> 
> The CTO then said "Sorry.. I meant Ubuntu." and seeing my pale face, he
> said in a reassuring tone "Don't be afraid, there are no Windows
> machines here." which brought me back to life.
> 
> I hope to be as brave as you some day.

Any Vacancies
whatever they do I am sure I can learn :-)



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are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is generally
understood.  Indeed, the world is ruled by little else.
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Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[alister via Python-list]

On Sun, 28 Jan 2018 22:11:12 +, Stefan Ram wrote:

> Tim Delaney  writes:
>>These are support people who are employed by the company I'm contracted
>>to.
>>Doesn't matter how often I try to train them otherwise, this type of
>>thing keeps happening.
> 
>   That might be more a problem of power.

I would simply repeatedly reject the fault report until the user provided 
the information in the requested format




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Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[Jugurtha Hadjar]

On 01/28/2018 04:43 PM, Skip Montanaro wrote:

I've never been a Windows user, but at my current job, Windows is core to
just about everything, so I am forced to use it for a lot of stuff
(Outlook, SQL Server, Excel, etc).


I was hired at a startup which made a good impression on me and I was 
eager to start working. I checked in for my first day, signed the 
paperwork, then the CTO showed me around and told me "Here's your 
laptop, you can install Windows and I'll check in with you later". Life 
started draining out of my body and my mind was racing in all directions 
before he even finished his sentence. I felt tricked: I was hired based 
on a test and the file I've received was a *.tar.gz* and it made me 
happy because I assumed they were a NIX shop..


I was considering how I should go about quitting gracefully. I have 
stopped using Windows in 2008 for psychological reasons for it made me 
really anxious, irritable, angry, and tense to the point of abusing 
hardware with low kicks and punches which was not very healthy or sane. 
It was only when I switched OS that this behavior stopped. There was no 
way I would be going back to my bully.


The CTO then said "Sorry.. I meant Ubuntu." and seeing my pale face, he 
said in a reassuring tone "Don't be afraid, there are no Windows 
machines here." which brought me back to life.


I hope to be as brave as you some day.

--
~ Jugurtha Hadjar,

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Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[Dan Stromberg]

On Sun, Jan 28, 2018 at 8:24 PM, Dan Stromberg  wrote:
> If an NN can ... play go on a level that can beat the best human in the
> world

Correcting myself: I think Google's AlphaGo used more than one NN,
plus perhaps a little traditional reading algorithm.  So I probably
should have said "If NN's can ...".
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Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[Dan Stromberg]

On Sun, Jan 28, 2018 at 5:46 PM, Steven D'Aprano
 wrote:
> On Sun, 28 Jan 2018 17:13:05 -0800, Dan Stromberg wrote:
>> It feel like it'd be possible to train a neural network to translate
>> text in a screenshot to plain text though.
>
> That would be OCR, which has been around long before neural networks.
> Neither OCR nor neural networks can magically enhance low-res pixellated
> images and *accurately* turn them into text.

Yes, I'm familiar with OCR, but last I heard, it was still requiring
tuning with a specific font.

Is it really true that OCR appeared long before Neural Networks
(NN's)?  I first heard of NN's in the 80's, but OCR more like the
90's.  NN's have been around a long time, but it's only recently that
they've become highly useful because of the increase in computer
power, an explosion of digital data availability, and algorithm
improvements.

If an NN can translate from English to German well, and can tell a cat
from a dog, or play go on a level that can beat the best human in the
world, an NN might be able to do the job OCR was intended for given
adequate training data.  And we could probably write a little gobject
introspection app to generate copious training data.
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Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[Larry Martell]

On Sun, Jan 28, 2018 at 10:04 AM, Steven D'Aprano
 wrote:
> I'm seeing this annoying practice more and more often. Even for trivial
> pieces of text, a few lines, people post screenshots instead of copying
> the code.
>
> Where has this meme come from? It seems to be one which inconveniences
> *everyone* involved:
>
> - for the sender, instead of a simple copy and paste, they have to take a
> screen shot, possibly trim the image to remove any bits of the screen
> they don't want to show, attach it to their email or upload it to an
> image hosting site;
>
> - for the receiver, you are reliant on a forum which doesn't strip
> attachments, or displays externally hosted images; the visually impaired
> are excluded from using a screen reader; and nobody can copy or edit the
> given text.
>
> It is as if people are deliberately inconveniencing themselves in order
> to inconvenience the people they are asking to help them.
>
> With the exception of one *exceedingly* overrated advantage, namely the
> ability to annotate the image with coloured lines and circles and
> squiggles or other graphics (which most people don't bother to do), this
> seems to me to be 100% counter-productive for everyone involved. Why has
> it spread and why do people keep doing it?
>
> I don't want to be the old man yelling "Get Of My Lawn!" to the cool
> kids, but is this just another sign of the downward spiral of programming
> talent? Convince me that there is *some* justification for this practice.
> Even a tiny one.
>
> (The day a programmer posts a WAV file of themselves reading their code
> out aloud, is the day I turn my modem off and leave the internet forever.)

I work remotely and have for over 20 years. At first I communicated
with my colleagues via phone and email. Then it was skype for a while
but then it went back to email. Then IRC had a moment, then it was
slack for a while, then back to email. Now everyone seems to be
switching to google hangouts, both chat and video. Recently I have
seen that some people are sending screen shots of their code and/or
error messages instead of copy/pasting.  It's mostly with the younger
ones, and I do not care for it at all, but I did not want to be the
old fogy, so I did not say anything.
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Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Sun, 28 Jan 2018 17:13:05 -0800, Dan Stromberg wrote:

> I'm afraid the perspective may be:
> Text == primitive
> GUI == modern
> 
> It feel like it'd be possible to train a neural network to translate
> text in a screenshot to plain text though.

That would be OCR, which has been around long before neural networks. 
Neither OCR nor neural networks can magically enhance low-res pixellated 
images and *accurately* turn them into text.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_character_recognition


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Steve

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Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[Dan Sommers]

On Mon, 29 Jan 2018 00:27:07 +, Steven D'Aprano wrote:

> On Mon, 29 Jan 2018 08:55:54 +1100, Tim Delaney wrote:
> 
>> I got back a Word document containing about 10 screenshots where they'd
>> apparently taken a screenshot, moved the horizontal scrollbar one
>> screen, taken another screenshot, etc.
> 
> You're lucky they didn't just take a single screen shot, thinking that 
> you can scroll past the edges to see what is off-screen.

No!  Not another pass by reference vs. pass by value thread!

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Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[Dan Stromberg]

I'm afraid the perspective may be:
Text == primitive
GUI == modern

It feel like it'd be possible to train a neural network to translate
text in a screenshot to plain text though.

On Sun, Jan 28, 2018 at 7:04 AM, Steven D'Aprano
 wrote:
> I'm seeing this annoying practice more and more often. Even for trivial
> pieces of text, a few lines, people post screenshots instead of copying
> the code.
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Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[Tim Delaney]

On 29 January 2018 at 11:27, Steven D'Aprano <
steve+comp.lang.pyt...@pearwood.info> wrote:

> On Mon, 29 Jan 2018 08:55:54 +1100, Tim Delaney wrote:
>
> > I got back a Word document containing about 10 screenshots where they'd
> > apparently taken a screenshot, moved the horizontal scrollbar one
> > screen, taken another screenshot, etc.
>
> You're lucky they didn't just take a single screen shot, thinking that
> you can scroll past the edges to see what is off-screen.


I suspect that was the case on the original screenshot in Word document ...

Tim Delaney
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Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Mon, 29 Jan 2018 08:55:54 +1100, Tim Delaney wrote:

> I got back a Word document containing about 10 screenshots where they'd
> apparently taken a screenshot, moved the horizontal scrollbar one
> screen, taken another screenshot, etc.

You're lucky they didn't just take a single screen shot, thinking that 
you can scroll past the edges to see what is off-screen.


-- 
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Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[Gregory Ewing]

Steven D'Aprano wrote:
(The day a programmer posts a WAV file of themselves reading their code 
out aloud, is the day I turn my modem off and leave the internet forever.)


Shh! Don't give them ideas!

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Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[Tim Delaney]

On 29 January 2018 at 02:04, Steven D'Aprano <
steve+comp.lang.pyt...@pearwood.info> wrote:

> I'm seeing this annoying practice more and more often. Even for trivial
> pieces of text, a few lines, people post screenshots instead of copying
> the code.


I don't tend to see this from programmers I work with, but I'm constantly
having to deal with support tickets where the person raising the ticket put
a screenshot of something like a console or grid output of an SQL tool or
even a logfile opened in a text editor ... Even worse, usually they'll
paste the screenshot into a Word document first (which then causes
difficulties to view the screenshot due to page width, etc).

I had one case the other day where they'd taken a screenshot of some of the
columns of the output of an SQL query and pasted it into a Word document. I
specifically asked them not to do this, explained that the tool they were
using could export to CSV and that would be much more useful as I could
search it, etc. I offered to walk them through how to do the CSV export.
And I requested that they send me the entire output (all columns) of the
SQL output.

I got back a Word document containing about 10 screenshots where they'd
apparently taken a screenshot, moved the horizontal scrollbar one screen,
taken another screenshot, etc.

These are support people who are employed by the company I'm contracted to.
Doesn't matter how often I try to train them otherwise, this type of thing
keeps happening.

BTW: I have nothing to do with the final persistence format of the data,
but in practice I've had to learn the DB schema and stored procedures for
everything I support. Strangely the DB team don't have to learn my parts ...

Tim Delaney
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Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[Chris Angelico]

On Mon, Jan 29, 2018 at 7:41 AM,   wrote:
> On Sunday, January 28, 2018 at 3:27:06 PM UTC-5, Chris Angelico wrote:
>> On Mon, Jan 29, 2018 at 7:13 AM, Chris Warrick  wrote:
>> > On 28 January 2018 at 20:19, Chris Angelico  wrote:
>> >> The vanilla Windows console (conhost.exe IIRC) is far from ideal for
>> >> copying and pasting from
>> >
>> > It’s been fixed in recent Windows 10 releases (select and Ctrl+C works 
>> > now).
>>
>> Haven't used it, but that's good news at least.
>>
>> >> Windows error popups are *impossible* to copy text from.
>> >
>> > Most standard error popups support pressing Ctrl+C to copy the text
>> > displayed in them.
>>
>> Really? Most? That would be a HUGE improvement. Historically, only a
>> handful have actually had selectable text. And really, it has to be
>> not just the core Windows error popups, but application ones as well;
>> so it has to be the underlying message-box API that supports it.
>>
>> ChrisA
>
> Most popups in applications using the standard Windows dialogs
> can still be copied from, even if the text doesn't look selectable:
>
>   - give the dialog a focus
>   - press Ctrl-A (this invisibly selects all text)
>   - press Ctrl-C to copy the text
>   - paste (Ctrl-V) into your favorite text editor.
>

Ah. Good that it's possible... but... a novice programmer is expected
to know this... how?

ChrisA
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Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[codewizard]

On Sunday, January 28, 2018 at 3:27:06 PM UTC-5, Chris Angelico wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 29, 2018 at 7:13 AM, Chris Warrick  wrote:
> > On 28 January 2018 at 20:19, Chris Angelico  wrote:
> >> The vanilla Windows console (conhost.exe IIRC) is far from ideal for
> >> copying and pasting from
> >
> > It’s been fixed in recent Windows 10 releases (select and Ctrl+C works now).
> 
> Haven't used it, but that's good news at least.
> 
> >> Windows error popups are *impossible* to copy text from.
> >
> > Most standard error popups support pressing Ctrl+C to copy the text
> > displayed in them.
> 
> Really? Most? That would be a HUGE improvement. Historically, only a
> handful have actually had selectable text. And really, it has to be
> not just the core Windows error popups, but application ones as well;
> so it has to be the underlying message-box API that supports it.
> 
> ChrisA

Most popups in applications using the standard Windows dialogs 
can still be copied from, even if the text doesn't look selectable:

  - give the dialog a focus
  - press Ctrl-A (this invisibly selects all text)
  - press Ctrl-C to copy the text
  - paste (Ctrl-V) into your favorite text editor.

Regards,
Igor.
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Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[eryk sun]

On Sun, Jan 28, 2018 at 4:36 PM, Steven D'Aprano
 wrote:
> On Sun, 28 Jan 2018 15:54:31 +, Tim Golden wrote:
>
>> At least for Windows users, grabbing a partial screenshot (eg of text)
>> has been very easy since Windows 7 when the "Snipping Tool" was added to
>> the builtins.
>
> Thanks, I didn't know that.

It's a common feature in desktop environments. In Ubuntu Linux I can
hit Shift+PrintScreen to select and save part of the screen as a PNG
file, or copy it to the clipboard.

But it's no excuse for sending screen shots of source code.
Fortunately on Stack Overflow I usually see this for command prompt
screenshots of errors, not source code.

>> Certainly easier for the average user than trying to do a
>> slightly tricky rectangle selection within the Windows console.
>
> But I'm not seeing that it could possibly be easier than selecting text
> and hitting copy and paste. Not even in the Windows console, which I
> admit is a bit clunky, let alone a modern IDE. More *familiar*, maybe,
> but easier?

The new console in Windows 10 defaults to line-wrapping selection
instead of rectangle selection. Holding the ALT key temporarily
toggles the selection mode.
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Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[Chris Angelico]

On Mon, Jan 29, 2018 at 7:13 AM, Chris Warrick  wrote:
> On 28 January 2018 at 20:19, Chris Angelico  wrote:
>> The vanilla Windows console (conhost.exe IIRC) is far from ideal for
>> copying and pasting from
>
> It’s been fixed in recent Windows 10 releases (select and Ctrl+C works now).

Haven't used it, but that's good news at least.

>> Windows error popups are *impossible* to copy text from.
>
> Most standard error popups support pressing Ctrl+C to copy the text
> displayed in them.

Really? Most? That would be a HUGE improvement. Historically, only a
handful have actually had selectable text. And really, it has to be
not just the core Windows error popups, but application ones as well;
so it has to be the underlying message-box API that supports it.

ChrisA
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Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[Chris Warrick]

On 28 January 2018 at 20:19, Chris Angelico  wrote:
> The vanilla Windows console (conhost.exe IIRC) is far from ideal for
> copying and pasting from

It’s been fixed in recent Windows 10 releases (select and Ctrl+C works now).

> Windows error popups are *impossible* to copy text from.

Most standard error popups support pressing Ctrl+C to copy the text
displayed in them.

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Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[Terry Reedy]

On 1/28/2018 10:54 AM, Tim Golden wrote:

On 28/01/2018 15:04, Steven D'Aprano wrote:

I'm seeing this annoying practice more and more often. Even for trivial
pieces of text, a few lines, people post screenshots instead of copying
the code.


This happens on Stackoverflow too.  There, one can vote to close for 
lack of code or error message in the text.  I generally do not follow 
code image links and would encourage other to abstain also.


Hypothesis: as the number of beginning programming classes increases, 
the average quality, in some sense, of instructors and students go down. 
 On the other hand, I am sometimes impressed by what people attempt 
after too little preparation, in an attempt to improve their lives.



Where has this meme come from? It seems to be one which inconveniences
*everyone* involved:


At least for Windows users, grabbing a partial screenshot (eg of text) 
has been very easy since Windows 7 when the "Snipping Tool" was added to 
the builtins. Certainly easier for the average user than trying to do a 
slightly tricky rectangle selection within the Windows console.


I somehow missed the Snipping Tool.  Thanks for the information.  I 
won't use it for this list ;-), but an image of the MS Error box might 
be helpful occasionally on the tracker.


In Win10 Command Prompt, selection now works more of less normally, so 
that excuse is gone.


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Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[Grant Edwards]

On 2018-01-28, Skip Montanaro  wrote:

> I've noticed it as well. I suspect it's from the Windows universe where
> it's common to snip a bit of the screen which isn't pure text when asking
> about some problematic GUI thing which is causing problems.

It's definitely a Windows thing.  Most Windows uses don't even
understand the concept of plain text vs. a bitmap picture of some text
being displayed by an app.

Just be glad that they're using a screen capture utilitly and not 
taking a picture of thier screen with their phone.  [Yes, I've dealt
with problem reports from customers where that's what they send.]

-- 
Grant





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Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[Chris Angelico]

On Mon, Jan 29, 2018 at 3:36 AM, Steven D'Aprano
 wrote:
>> Certainly easier for the average user than trying to do a
>> slightly tricky rectangle selection within the Windows console.
>
> But I'm not seeing that it could possibly be easier than selecting text
> and hitting copy and paste. Not even in the Windows console, which I
> admit is a bit clunky, let alone a modern IDE. More *familiar*, maybe,
> but easier?

The vanilla Windows console (conhost.exe IIRC) is far from ideal for
copying and pasting from, and by and large, Windows error popups are
*impossible* to copy text from. So people get into the habit of either
transcribing by hand (tedious, error-prone, will inevitably
abbreviate) or taking a screenshot (100% reliable, nice and easy,
gives all the info). In a forum where attachments are acceptable,
which one are they going to be encouraged to use?

> Unless your sole programming language is Scratch or another "visual
> programming language", you're writing text and your question is about
> text. And the output is almost certainly text. Especially in the case of
> an exception, say.

I know that, and you know that, but not everyone does.

> I didn't even say *plain text*. I would completely understand it -- hate
> it, but understand it -- if people posted HTML and marked up their text
> with comments and colour. Hell, I'm even willing to consider that /maybe/
> programming source code should be some form of rich text. But at least
> rich text is text, not a bunch of pixels.

Yeah, I've occasionally seen HTML emails with full syntax
highlighting. It's rare though.

> I'm sorry to the OP of the other thread if he feels I'm picking on him,
> I'm not intending to single him out. I'm just seeing this habit more and
> more often in many different forums, and I had to ask where it was coming
> from. It's obviously *learned* behaviour: there's nothing natural about
> taking a screen shot to ask a question. I'm not surprised that yet again
> Microsoft has made the world a little bit worse by trying to make things
> easier for ordinary (l)users, and their bad habits are spreading into the
> programming community.

Agreed, this is not about any single person. There is a huge problem,
and most of it (IMO) derives from a general habit of the Windows (and
maybe Mac) GUIs of giving critical information in pop-up windows that
have *no way* to get a text dump from. The "culture of the screen
shot" has been around for way too long, and it's not going anywhere
any time soon, so all we can do is continue to tell people a better
way, and... well... hope for the text.

Okay, that pun was bad even in my own head. Sorry. Hope for the best.

ChrisA
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Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[Gene Heskett]

On Sunday 28 January 2018 10:55:30 Peter J. Holzer wrote:

> On 2018-01-28 15:04:26 +, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> > I'm seeing this annoying practice more and more often. Even for
> > trivial pieces of text, a few lines, people post screenshots instead
> > of copying the code.
> >
> > Where has this meme come from?
>
> Twitter? You can't send more than 140 characters[1], but you can send
> an image, so just put your text in an image to get around pesky size
> restrictions.
>
> But no, our users have done that for much longer than twitter exists.
> The typical mail to support doesn't contain an error message in plain
> text, not even a screenshot, it contains a word (or excel) file with a
> screenshot of the error message (typically scaled down so that the
> error message isn't readable any more).
>
> It reminds me about the old joke about the mathematician making
> coffee: He finds an empty cup in the sink, rinses it, puts some ground
> coffee and water into the coffee maker, waits for the water to run
> through and pours the coffee into the cup.
> The next day he wants some coffee again. But there is no cup in the
> sink. Instead there is a cup in the cupboard. So he takes the cup from
> the cupboard and puts it into the sink. Now he has reduced the problem
> to a previously solved problem and proceeds as before.
>
> Similarly the user sending a wort attachment instead of a plain text
> message knows how to take a screenshot, knows how to paste that into
> word and knows how to attach a word file to an email. So they combine
> those steps. They may or may not know how to copy some text into the
> email (to be fair, Windows error messages often cannot be copied), but
> it simply doesn't occur to them.
>
> I used to think that programmers (or techies in general) ought to be
> able to write emails in a fashion that makes it easy to extract the
> necessary information. I have since been disabused of the notion.
> Programmers are just as thoughtless and unable to put themselves into
> the recipient's shoes as the general population.
>
> Oh, and finally there is tools: I switched to Outlook for in-company
> mails a year ago (because my boss wants me to top-post and I simply
> can't do that if I have a decent editor, but with a crappy program
> like Outlook I can) and it is just amazing how time consuming it is to
> format a mail containing code examples to be readable. Taking a
> screenshot and pasting it into the mail is faster (even though
> Outlooks inline image handling is also atrocious).
>
> > (The day a programmer posts a WAV file of themselves reading their
> > code out aloud, is the day I turn my modem off and leave the
> > internet forever.)
>
> When the first MIME RFCs came out, a co-worker predicted that we would
> soon get audio-clips as signatures. Thank god he was wrong about that.
>
> hp
>
> [1] 280 now.

But by mentioning it, somebody will now do it. The problem will be what 
the hell do you play it with...

-- 
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Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Sun, 28 Jan 2018 15:54:31 +, Tim Golden wrote:

> At least for Windows users, grabbing a partial screenshot (eg of text)
> has been very easy since Windows 7 when the "Snipping Tool" was added to
> the builtins. 

Thanks, I didn't know that.


> Certainly easier for the average user than trying to do a
> slightly tricky rectangle selection within the Windows console.

But I'm not seeing that it could possibly be easier than selecting text 
and hitting copy and paste. Not even in the Windows console, which I 
admit is a bit clunky, let alone a modern IDE. More *familiar*, maybe, 
but easier?


[...]
> FWIW I agree with you; and I even see this at work in different forms:
> someone sends a screenshot of a spreadsheet to illustrate a problem
> rather than the sheet itself. (When there's no especial sensitivity
> which might otherwise be a good reason).

Ah, this is the 21st century equivalent of somebody printing a document, 
scanning it, and emailing the scan. (Bonus points if they somehow manage 
to get the pages out of order or upside down when scanning.)


> But most people don't interact with text-only forums these days, so it's
> only natural that the don't consider that aspect of things.

No, sorry, I don't agree with that. I'm not talking about "most people", 
I'm talking about programmers, nor about "text-only" forums. Even if 
attachments came through, it would still be a bad idea to send 
screenshots to ask questions about your code.


Unless your sole programming language is Scratch or another "visual 
programming language", you're writing text and your question is about 
text. And the output is almost certainly text. Especially in the case of 
an exception, say.

(If your question is about, say, the layout of graphical elements in your 
GUI, then a screenshot is fine -- I'm not a troglodyte, I understand that 
sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words.)

And writing an email requires writing text. And when people ask "fix my 
code for me", they are expecting to receive text they can copy and paste 
back. So text is the natural media for this sort of question, and there's 
nothing natural about thinking "I know, I'll take a virtual photo of this 
text and send that".

I didn't even say *plain text*. I would completely understand it -- hate 
it, but understand it -- if people posted HTML and marked up their text 
with comments and colour. Hell, I'm even willing to consider that /maybe/ 
programming source code should be some form of rich text. But at least 
rich text is text, not a bunch of pixels.

I'm sorry to the OP of the other thread if he feels I'm picking on him, 
I'm not intending to single him out. I'm just seeing this habit more and 
more often in many different forums, and I had to ask where it was coming 
from. It's obviously *learned* behaviour: there's nothing natural about 
taking a screen shot to ask a question. I'm not surprised that yet again 
Microsoft has made the world a little bit worse by trying to make things 
easier for ordinary (l)users, and their bad habits are spreading into the 
programming community.



-- 
Steve

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Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[Peter J. Holzer]

On 2018-01-28 15:04:26 +, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> I'm seeing this annoying practice more and more often. Even for trivial 
> pieces of text, a few lines, people post screenshots instead of copying 
> the code.
> 
> Where has this meme come from?

Twitter? You can't send more than 140 characters[1], but you can send an
image, so just put your text in an image to get around pesky size
restrictions.

But no, our users have done that for much longer than twitter exists.
The typical mail to support doesn't contain an error message in plain
text, not even a screenshot, it contains a word (or excel) file with a
screenshot of the error message (typically scaled down so that the error
message isn't readable any more).

It reminds me about the old joke about the mathematician making coffee:
He finds an empty cup in the sink, rinses it, puts some ground coffee
and water into the coffee maker, waits for the water to run through and
pours the coffee into the cup.
The next day he wants some coffee again. But there is no cup in the
sink. Instead there is a cup in the cupboard. So he takes the cup from
the cupboard and puts it into the sink. Now he has reduced the problem
to a previously solved problem and proceeds as before.

Similarly the user sending a wort attachment instead of a plain text
message knows how to take a screenshot, knows how to paste that into
word and knows how to attach a word file to an email. So they combine
those steps. They may or may not know how to copy some text into the
email (to be fair, Windows error messages often cannot be copied), but
it simply doesn't occur to them.

I used to think that programmers (or techies in general) ought to be
able to write emails in a fashion that makes it easy to extract the
necessary information. I have since been disabused of the notion.
Programmers are just as thoughtless and unable to put themselves into
the recipient's shoes as the general population.

Oh, and finally there is tools: I switched to Outlook for in-company
mails a year ago (because my boss wants me to top-post and I simply
can't do that if I have a decent editor, but with a crappy program like
Outlook I can) and it is just amazing how time consuming it is to format
a mail containing code examples to be readable. Taking a screenshot and
pasting it into the mail is faster (even though Outlooks inline image
handling is also atrocious).

> (The day a programmer posts a WAV file of themselves reading their code 
> out aloud, is the day I turn my modem off and leave the internet forever.)

When the first MIME RFCs came out, a co-worker predicted that we would
soon get audio-clips as signatures. Thank god he was wrong about that.

hp

[1] 280 now.

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|_|_) || because we have much more sophisticated
| |   | h...@hjp.at | management tools.
__/   | http://www.hjp.at/ | -- Ross Anderson 


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Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[Tim Golden]

On 28/01/2018 15:04, Steven D'Aprano wrote:

I'm seeing this annoying practice more and more often. Even for trivial
pieces of text, a few lines, people post screenshots instead of copying
the code.

Where has this meme come from? It seems to be one which inconveniences
*everyone* involved:

- for the sender, instead of a simple copy and paste, they have to take a
screen shot, possibly trim the image to remove any bits of the screen
they don't want to show, attach it to their email or upload it to an
image hosting site;


At least for Windows users, grabbing a partial screenshot (eg of text) 
has been very easy since Windows 7 when the "Snipping Tool" was added to 
the builtins. Certainly easier for the average user than trying to do a 
slightly tricky rectangle selection within the Windows console.


Likewise, including it in an email isn't hard; there's a command to do 
it right there from within that tool.


And some at least of the disadvantages you cite for the receiver are 
rarely known or well understood by the senders. They regularly send and 
receive emails with embedded images; why should the mailing list they 
use be any different?


FWIW I agree with you; and I even see this at work in different forms: 
someone sends a screenshot of a spreadsheet to illustrate a problem 
rather than the sheet itself. (When there's no especial sensitivity 
which might otherwise be a good reason).


But most people don't interact with text-only forums these days, so it's 
only natural that the don't consider that aspect of things.


TJG
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Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[Skip Montanaro]

I've noticed it as well. I suspect it's from the Windows universe where
it's common to snip a bit of the screen which isn't pure text when asking
about some problematic GUI thing which is causing problems.

I've never been a Windows user, but at my current job, Windows is core to
just about everything, so I am forced to use it for a lot of stuff
(Outlook, SQL Server, Excel, etc). I see lots of screen snips flow around,
and even use that technique at times when asking our help desk for some
mystifying Windows thing.

Skip
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Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[Karsten Hilbert]

On Sun, Jan 28, 2018 at 03:04:26PM +, Steven D'Aprano wrote:

> (The day a programmer posts a WAV file of themselves reading their code 
> out aloud, is the day I turn my modem off and leave the internet forever.)

And the clever hack will be to send a WAV that tricks your
modem into surprising things by whistling just the right
way ...

:-)

Best,
Karsten
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Re: Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[Wildman via Python-list]

On Sun, 28 Jan 2018 15:04:26 +, Steven D'Aprano wrote:

> I'm seeing this annoying practice more and more often. Even for trivial 
> pieces of text, a few lines, people post screenshots instead of copying 
> the code.
> 
> Where has this meme come from? It seems to be one which inconveniences 
> *everyone* involved:
> 
> - for the sender, instead of a simple copy and paste, they have to take a 
> screen shot, possibly trim the image to remove any bits of the screen 
> they don't want to show, attach it to their email or upload it to an 
> image hosting site;
> 
> - for the receiver, you are reliant on a forum which doesn't strip 
> attachments, or displays externally hosted images; the visually impaired 
> are excluded from using a screen reader; and nobody can copy or edit the 
> given text.
> 
> It is as if people are deliberately inconveniencing themselves in order 
> to inconvenience the people they are asking to help them.
> 
> With the exception of one *exceedingly* overrated advantage, namely the 
> ability to annotate the image with coloured lines and circles and 
> squiggles or other graphics (which most people don't bother to do), this 
> seems to me to be 100% counter-productive for everyone involved. Why has 
> it spread and why do people keep doing it?
> 
> I don't want to be the old man yelling "Get Of My Lawn!" to the cool 
> kids, but is this just another sign of the downward spiral of programming 
> talent? Convince me that there is *some* justification for this practice. 
> Even a tiny one.
> 
> (The day a programmer posts a WAV file of themselves reading their code 
> out aloud, is the day I turn my modem off and leave the internet forever.)

I can think of no justification for it.

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Where has the practice of sending screen shots as source code come from?

[Steven D'Aprano]

I'm seeing this annoying practice more and more often. Even for trivial 
pieces of text, a few lines, people post screenshots instead of copying 
the code.

Where has this meme come from? It seems to be one which inconveniences 
*everyone* involved:

- for the sender, instead of a simple copy and paste, they have to take a 
screen shot, possibly trim the image to remove any bits of the screen 
they don't want to show, attach it to their email or upload it to an 
image hosting site;

- for the receiver, you are reliant on a forum which doesn't strip 
attachments, or displays externally hosted images; the visually impaired 
are excluded from using a screen reader; and nobody can copy or edit the 
given text.

It is as if people are deliberately inconveniencing themselves in order 
to inconvenience the people they are asking to help them.

With the exception of one *exceedingly* overrated advantage, namely the 
ability to annotate the image with coloured lines and circles and 
squiggles or other graphics (which most people don't bother to do), this 
seems to me to be 100% counter-productive for everyone involved. Why has 
it spread and why do people keep doing it?

I don't want to be the old man yelling "Get Of My Lawn!" to the cool 
kids, but is this just another sign of the downward spiral of programming 
talent? Convince me that there is *some* justification for this practice. 
Even a tiny one.

(The day a programmer posts a WAV file of themselves reading their code 
out aloud, is the day I turn my modem off and leave the internet forever.)



-- 
Steve

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