Mistakes, Criticism, and Flames

[Garrett Smith]

It is usually best to own your mistakes. It is not that big a deal to
make a dumb mistake; it's how you act after it's pointed out that counts
the most.

Think about this: Say someone acts like a punk while posting a code
comment. Who does that reflect poorly on, the author of the code that is
being commented on or the poster? If the author owns the mistake, then
then he did the right thing and the other guy might tend to be perceived
as a punk.

Sure it sucks when the other person is being a jerk. And if you actually
had mistake, its worse. But if it is a mistake, then fix it. If you
think the person is being a jerk about it, you can mention that briefly
-- you might actually come to an understanding. Perhaps he's posted the
same thing four times and you just ignored him. Or perhaps he's got some
personal issues.

If the flames make up the bulk of the comment, then there's not much
criticism left to respond to.

All easier said than done, I know.

 

[SteveYoungTbird]

It is usually best to own your mistakes. It is not that big a deal to
make a dumb mistake; it's how you act after it's pointed out that counts
the most.

Think about this: Say someone acts like a punk while posting a code
comment. Who does that reflect poorly on, the author of the code that is
being commented on or the poster? If the author owns the mistake, then
then he did the right thing and the other guy might tend to be perceived
as a punk.

Sure it sucks when the other person is being a jerk. And if you actually
had mistake, its worse. But if it is a mistake, then fix it. If you
think the person is being a jerk about it, you can mention that briefly
-- you might actually come to an understanding. Perhaps he's posted the
same thing four times and you just ignored him. Or perhaps he's got some
personal issues.

If the flames make up the bulk of the comment, then there's not much
criticism left to respond to.

All easier said than done, I know.

I don't think "mistakes" are really the problem with this group. This is
not about making mistakes but about being able to ask questions in order
to learn.

The problem here, which ensures that those learning EMCAScript stop
posting, is as follows. Say someone has written a piece of ECMAScript
code that is not working as he thought it would. He uses Firebug, Lint,
offline resources such O'Reilly Rhino and online resources such as c.l.j
and W3Schools, etc and but cannot find out what is wrong. Finally, after
doing a search for similar questions on c.l.j. without success, he
plucks up the courage to post his question on c.l.j If he is lucky and a
certain few anal retentive people who usually hang around c.l.j. 24/7
are taking some time off, he will be answered by someone like Evertjan
and will get a sensible and useful answer. Usually, however, he will be
answered in a smart-arsed way by one of the few above-mentioned regulars
who have a bee in there bonnet about, for instance, the name of
EMCAScript or the use of libraries and frameworks and his post will be
hijacked into a discussion of the regulars pet hates. At this point the
OP can forget about an answer to his question and after experiencing
this two or three times he will give up posting here. This is a big
shame for those learning (which if we would only admit it is all of us)
but also for c.l.j. which has become stale and uninteresting, endlessly
discussing the same things over and over.

Cheers Steve.

 

[SteveYoungTbird]

The fact that almost all of the popular libraries/frameworks have
serious faults should not be dismissed as just some regular's pet hate.

I agree that almost all (probably all full stop) libraries/frameworks
have serious faults and that is why I have *never* used nor advocated
any of them, ever. This hasn't stopped some regulars telling me to "go
back to the JQuery group where you belong" etc. despite me never
mentioning any libraries/frameworks in my post.

If a thread becomes stale or uninteresting I simply stop reading it.

But it would be nice to have some interesting ones though, wouldn't it?

That someone may respond to my post in a smart-arsed way is their
perogative and not something I want policed even though I may dislike
the response.

Do what most sensible people do: take what you can and leave the rest.

That's fine, but it means that many stop posting questions as I did a
long time ago, and a potentially useful resource is then wasted because
of the actions of a few.

Steve.

 

[Ry Nohryb]

(...)
The fact that almost all of the popular libraries/frameworks have
serious faults should not be dismissed as just some regular's pet hate. (....)

While nothing is perfect and fault-free except the nothingness, it
happens that something imperfect is better than nothing,
paradoxically. And whether these main libraries/frameworks' alleged
"faults" are really serious or just things that could-have-been-done-
better or just plain nitpicking is most of the times something very
debatable. And there's a thing called fixing bugs. And another called
there's always room for improvement. And another called upgrades and
evolution. And it's sooo very easy to find, and almost impossible not
to find, something to criticize in someone else's code when it has
thousands of LOC. And -sorry, but- there's quite a few poor little men
in this group, for whom it's just pointing at others' faults over any
other thing what makes them feel g(o)od.