Re: conditionals in elisp

[Pascal J. Bourguignon]

Richard Riley <rileyrgdev@gmail.com> writes:

> pjb@informatimago.com (Pascal J. Bourguignon) writes:
>
>> Richard Riley <rileyrgdev@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>> pjb@informatimago.com (Pascal J. Bourguignon) writes:
>>>
>>>> LanX <lanx.perl@googlemail.com> writes:
>>>>
>>>>> Joe Brenner has a nice elisp <-> perl comparison table, which helped
>>>>> me a lot:
>>>>>
>>>>> http://obsidianrook.com/devnotes/elisp-for-perl-programmers.html
>>>>>
>>>>> BTW: first hit googling "elisp perl" 8)
>>>>
>>>> Obviously, google is too hard for the OP, if he cannot be bothered to
>>>> read the minimum about emacs...
>>>
>>> The OP was looking for a quick lookup programmers guide to common elisp
>>> constructs. The elisp manual is not really quite so convenient : good
>>> though it can be.
>>>
>>> People frequently want to modify an existing feature without learning
>>> the entire emacs infrastructure.
>>>
>>> Pointing to existing code is one such way to help. Suggesting he parse
>>> it all with perl probably not quite so helpful ..
>>>
>>> Personally whenever I revisit elisp I find Xah Lee's tutorial helpful at
>>> times.
>>
>> Whatever.  Results 1 - 50 of about 151,000 for emacs lisp cheatsheet. (0.58 
>> seconds) 
>>
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
> cheatsheet? I would never have thought of using that word. Would many
> programmers? Most people look up "reference" or "tutorial". Sometimes
> people get flustered and lost and need human interaction. 

Of course, normal people search tutorials or references.   
People in a hurry may look at cheatsheets.

I can hardly qualify people who ask something mentionning that they
don't care to learn the first thing about what they ask.  I find this
behavior quite irritating.


> The op was polite and looking for pointers.

He has received polite answers.


>> Notice how google is much faster than typing one's question on the
>> newsgroups...
>
> Makes one wonder why the groups are here eh? You know .. to ask people
> in the know and maybe pick up a few pointers and friendly suggestions on
> how best to proceed. That kind of thing.
>
> You should set up an auto "RTFG" response.

Well, we'd have to assume that usenet users would be interested in the
topic of the discussion.  Again, what do you think of somebody who
starts by stating that they're not interested by the topic of the
discussion?


Otherwise, the heuristic would be to first try several keywords
combinations with google, and if nothing comes out, then go to the
concerned newsgroup to ask for help (mentionning the keywords tried
with google).  

The answer may then be a hint on the right keywords, or may have more
semantic contents, when indeed it's not a purely syntactic question
that could be answered by google.  

Asking google first would save everybody a lot of time, resources and
energy, allowing us to give even better answers when they indeed
cannot be found in the existing "literature".



-- 
__Pascal Bourguignon__