{"id":18543,"date":"2009-04-16T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-04-16T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/2009\/04\/16\/the-frustration-of-people-who-are-not-interested-in-why-something-works-but-only-interested-in-the-magic-phrase-they-need-to-type\/"},"modified":"2009-04-16T10:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-04-16T10:00:00","slug":"the-frustration-of-people-who-are-not-interested-in-why-something-works-but-only-interested-in-the-magic-phrase-they-need-to-type","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/20090416-00\/?p=18543","title":{"rendered":"The frustration of people who are not interested in why something works but only interested in the magic phrase they need to type"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nIt’s frustrating when people who are presumably smart\n(or who are at least pretending to be)\nhave a problem and are satisfied to receive the magic phrase they\nneed to type with no interest at all in understanding why\nthe magic phrase works.\nFor example, here’s a question sent to an internal mailing list\nfor users of something I’ll call Program Q<\/I>.\n<\/P>\n

\nFrom<\/B>: X\n

\nWhy is it that after I use program Q to create a table,\nnothing else works?\nHere’s a batch file I’ve written:\n<\/P>\n

\nq create table newtable\npause\nq create table newtable2\n<\/PRE>\n
\nThe pause<\/CODE> command never executes; in fact, nothing in the\nbatch file executes after the first line.\nHow can I create multiple tables from a batch file?\n<\/BLOCKQUOTE>\n
\nMy psychic powers didn’t need very much charging up to solve this one.\nProgram Q is a popular one, and some teams like to create a wrapper\naround it for whatever reason.\n<\/P>\n
\nMy psychic powers tell me that the first “q” on the path\nis not q.exe.\n<\/BLOCKQUOTE>\n
\nAnother person on the mailing list knew what I was getting at\nand picked up the ball.\n<\/P>\n
\nFrom<\/B>: Y\n
\nTry using\ncall<\/FONT><\/B> q create table newtable<\/CODE>\ninstead.\n<\/P>\n<\/BLOCKQUOTE>\n
\n(Maybe you too can figure out what my psychic powers told me\nthe problem was.)\n<\/P>\n
\nThe response:\n<\/P>\n
\n
\nFrom<\/B>: X\n<\/P>\n
\nThanks, that did the trick.\nI put a call<\/CODE> in front of the first line and now\nthe entire batch file runs.\n<\/BLOCKQUOTE>\n
\nI replied:\n<\/P>\n
\n
\nDear X.\nPlease confirm that the first q<\/CODE> on the path is in fact\na batch file,\nin order to confirm that you understand the reason why you were\nencountering the problem,\nthat it has nothing to do with Program Q,\nand that you understand why the fix works.\nDon’t just copy the answer from your neighbor.\n<\/P>\n
\nI’ve already decided that I’m going to blog about people who\naccept an answer without bothering to understand why it works.\nHere’s your chance to at least look good when that blog entry\ncomes out.\n<\/P>\n<\/BLOCKQUOTE>\n
\nThere was no response.\n<\/P>\n
\nUpdate<\/B>: This was a mailing list for a programmer’s tool.\nAnd if you’re a programmer, you’d better understand\nwhat you’re doing when you do it, not just cargo-cult your way\nthrough your job.\nEspecially since this particular problem had nothing to do\nwith Program Q in the first place<\/I>.\n(On the other hand, I don’t blame non-programmers for being\nsatisfied with magic phrases.)\n<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It’s frustrating when people who are presumably smart (or who are at least pretending to be) have a problem and are satisfied to receive the magic phrase they need to type with no interest at all in understanding why the magic phrase works. For example, here’s a question sent to an internal mailing list for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1069,"featured_media":111744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-18543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oldnewthing","tag-other"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"
It’s frustrating when people who are presumably smart (or who are at least pretending to be) have a problem and are satisfied to receive the magic phrase they need to type with no interest at all in understanding why the magic phrase works. For example, here’s a question sent to an internal mailing list for […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1069"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18543\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}