Thanks for all your comments regarding how we communicate.
I appreciate your support when someone responds negatively to my offerings of help. It is true that I can be "brusque" (which is an embarrassment for me as a teacher of Nonviolent Communication).
Your encouragement to be welcoming and supportive is important to me and I will strive to be more so.
I am often puzzled when I see folk asking for help with homework when it seems that the student is not in a class designed to help him learn Python (either by being in the wrong class, not meeting the prerequisites or having an instructor who cannot communicate clearly or give assignments that will get good results. I have taught in industry and in fast-path-masters )FPM) programs. I once had 5evenings to teach Pascal to FPM students. Their prerequisite class failed to do what it was supposed to do, and I got the blame for not being able to deliver fully my 5 5evenings' worth.
I also find it frustrating when presented with a program that is a hodge-podge of things (e.g. functions) that came from various sources with no indication of who wrote what, and no sense that the programmer understands the various pieces.
A couple of years ago a local graduate found me by searching and finding references to my participation on these lists. We negotiated a private tutoring agreement. On his first visit he presented a Python program which I assumed he had written. I could see that it was doing things the hard and inefficient way, so I coached him on how to make it better. Eventually I discovered that (1) he knew almost noting about Python; (2) the original program had been written by his advisor. (3) His advisor did not even know enough about Python to understand how inefficient the program was; (4) his advisor kept aiming at a moving target. Very frustrating for all of us. Once i understood his position I created a series of exercises to help me evaluate his knowledge and to help him learn. These exercises turned out to be at a beginner's tutorial level.
Let us be compassionate; put our effort where it does the best; but continue asking for cooperation from the questioner.
If I had more time I probably could make the above shorter. -- Bob Gailer 919-636-4239 Chapel Hill NC _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org To unsubscribe or change subscription options: http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor
