10 cent fixes (somewhat OT)

[John Bokma]

Quote from email (there was much more along the same line). See also sig
for why he talks about book(s).

Now, in the past I considered purchasing a book from your wishlist and
sending it to you as a thank you, but I realized that it wasn't worth
it. For two reasons: (1) most the books on your list are high
priced--try finding some $5 books that match the $5 fixes I ask you
about (where the shipping isn't going to cost me an arm and a leg on
top of it); (2) the cost of buying it and having it shipped to my
place only to re-ship it to Mexico is a rip off because I'm wasting
twice as much money just to get it to you.

As I said, I have only ever asked you how to fix what was wrong in MY
coding. I never asked you to re-write it or to write the entire thing
for me. If I had you write an entire script for me, then, yes, I would
send you a book or two or three. But asking you to EDIT my code so I
know where I'm going wrong is an entirely different story. I have
certainly not come to you with "unlimited" requests. The above example
demonstrates well the kind of EDITS that I ask about MY code. It's
like a 10 cent fix

I don't know what others come to you about, but if you paid attention
to what I write, my requests are very simple: tell me what I'm doing
wrong. I know the code I am using works, whether theoretically or
practically the way I have written it, and I just asked you to verify
that it should work (e.g., "($ctime)=(split(/\#/,$lines[1],6))[4];
$ctime=&GetLastDatePosted;") and/or to point out what is missing
(e.g., "grep { /\w/ }"). As found out, the reason my $ctime wasn't
working was because of an error in the &GetLastDatePosted; code
itself, using (time) instead of ($tm). If I was asking you to write
everything from scratch, or re-write everything, instead of asking you
to check and verify it for me (since I am not fluent with the
language), then you would have a very valid point about "unlimited
help." If that's a problem, then I won't bother you again. For a 10
cent fix, if you should actually provide that fix, a simple "Thank
you" should suffice.


I've kindly told him not to contact me again, but he might start
contacting other people, so be warned. This is a very ungrateful person
[1].

I have no problem helping people for free on Usenet. But I think it's
fair that if you mail me several times and ask for help that I can ask
something in return instead of the person deciding how much I should be
given.


[1] He suddenly contacted me again, after I had told him at least twice
that something in return would be appreciated. He did hide is name
from me, but from the code it was obvious this is the same person.

 

[Rainer Weikusat]

Quote from email (there was much more along the same line). See also sig
for why he talks about book(s).

Now, in the past I considered purchasing a book from your wishlist and
sending it to you as a thank you, but I realized that it wasn't worth
it. For two reasons: (1) most the books on your list are high
priced--try finding some $5 books that match the $5 fixes I ask you
about

[stuff I'll hopefully not find in my mail]

Debugging code is at least as much work as writing code, more so if
debugging someone else's code and yet more so if "throw the crud away and
re-implement it sanely" is not an option.

I've kindly told him not to contact me again, but he might start
contacting other people, so be warned. This is a very ungrateful person
[1].

"Very ungrateful" is not a term I'd use to describe someone who tries to
bully other people into doing his work because he is too lazy to do
it himself ...