Friday, April 23, 2010

The Education of JRM

I learn so much from the Internet. Yesterday, someone posted a link to my post about Java. I got close to 3 orders of magnitude increase in traffic. Many people commiserated with me, and I thank them. Some, however, went the extra mile:
An ellipsis has three dots.
Mea culpa. I was sloppy. Fortunately, another reader defended me:
An ellipsis at the end of a sentence is three dots, followed by a period. He/she did it right.
Alas, if I did it right it was only by accident.
There should be a space between the ellipsis and the period. Putting four dots ala George Lucas is incorrect....
I'm flattered to be placed in such good company!

One reader pointed out that the problem might not lie in Java, but within me:
This is what reflection is for. If you can't solve this problem with reflection, then you don't really have reflection.
while others offered concrete advice:
Maybe you just need to learn to type faster.
and still others tactfully suggested I broaden my horizons:
ever code in C++? this isn't unique to Java, noob.
I thank you all for the advice and the spirit in which you offered it. I believe I'll reflect upon it this weekend — assuming I really have reflection. I will continue posting in the hope that I can be further edified.

2 comments:

Arcane Sentiment said...

The negativity may be because that post is unusually hard to respond to positively — it's hard to add something more interesting than "yeah, I feel that way too". So of the thousands of approving readers, even fewer than usual will say anything, and negative comments will be even more overrepresented than they usually are.

Ruben Berenguel said...

I have felt the same some times, when postingg something to reddit. A lot of comments are positive, but the few negative can make you think you have some kind of writing disorder or something similar. Go on, forget the negative ones and keep on writing.