On Sat, Oct 21, 2006 at 06:19:08PM +0200, Magnus Eriksson wrote:
> 
> Ok, pet peeve.  Rant.  Not directed to anyone in particular; especially 
> not TLS, who took the time to explain things to someone who asked.
> 
> 
> On Sat, 21 Oct 2006, Thor Lancelot Simon wrote:
> 
> >I tend to think that "How-Tos" are a very bad thing: they encourage people
> >to do complex tasks, with potentially serious consequences, without the
> >background knowledge they would have if they actually looked at the primary
> >documentation for long enough to figure it out.  Then if anything goes
> >wrong, they're utterly stuck.  The NetBSD Guide seems somewhat better.
> 
>   As someone who has actually had to learn things from scratch (as opposed 
> to being born with perfect knowledge), I disagree.

Oddly enough, I was not born with perfect knowledge either.

I am very, very glad that I did not "learn" anything (more properly, I would
say, come to pretend that I "knew" various things I didn't understand at all)
from "HowTo" files.

Actually doing the work to figure out how complex things work, from
correct explanations of more basic things, is a very important part of
the learning process.  If one doesn't do it, one really never acquires
the ability to solve _new_ problems, instead of just parroting the
solutions to problems others have solved before.

Thor