Re: Lua-tutor list? was function pointers in Lua

[David Kastrup <dak@...>]

steve donovan <steve.j.donovan@gmail.com> writes:

> On Thu, Nov 26, 2009 at 11:25 AM, Thomas Lauer <thomas.lauer@virgin.net> wrote:
>> his meaning of rudeness not to be the fist-in-your-face sort of
>> rudeness, more the curtness of "RTFM". Maybe I was wrong.
>
> Rudeness is only necessary when faced with rudeness, i.e. fighting
> noise with noise, as David would put it. Really only if one has a
> really difficult customer, who's looking for a fight or wants someone
> to do their homework. And even then, "don't feed the trolls" applies.
>
> Cynthia was not being rude, just asked a question: mixing Lua and C
> when you're starting off is definitely starting at the deep end of the
> pool and this requires due consideration.

Sometimes the task you have to do is in the deep end of the pool, to a
degree where you can't sensibly start with parts at the shallow end,
because you need to establish a framework for your task first.

It is entirely appropriate to say: "prepare for rough going, and the
following chapters in the following books will prove invaluable, so you
will make much better use of the energy and goodwill of the people on
this list and your time by using those chapters as your first resource
and the list as fallback".

"Prepare for rough going" is different from "do something else" or
"RTFM".

Fortunately for the list and new users, the canonical Lua books _are_
rather excellent.  That sort of startup advice is not as easy to give
with many other systems.

-- 
David Kastrup