Let me start my comment on this thread by saying that I have generally found the Lazarus/Free Pascal community very friendly and helpful.
Though my initial experience with Pascal was a very long time ago, 1980s for anyone who cares. I came to discover the Lazarus project 9 years ago and I believe back then some many people must have helped me right here on the forums because I started a project then and for some unexplained reason abandoned it, absolutely forgot I had ever started it then rediscovered it 9 years later, and pardon the word play here, resurrected it (those who know the Biblical story of Lazarus will get it
), and I can't believe I had written the code. Evidence that this community obviously helped me because I am a mediocre programmer at best.
On the subject of a quick answer I'd say yes feel free to give one but along with that either give some explanation to help educate the person or post links for further reading. How you phrase the "quick answer" can provoke a learning experience in itself. The person who gave the answer
Colonize (add a colon to) assignments and decolonize (remove colon from) expressions.
didn't actually give what I would call a quick answer. I apologize that I don't remember your name. A quick answer in my opinion would have been to post corrected syntax of the 'if' statements.
I don't have a problem with "quick answers" generally. Sometimes someone is trying to get something to work in the moment and they may not have time to take a course in object Pascal. If the same person keeps coming back with "pre-school" programming questions then it's time to point them to online tutorials such as
Lut has written. Many of us are not working in an "enterprise" or work related programming job. Some are just needing to explore our ability to create something and others like myself are working as a developer for free on an open source project and don't have the money or time to learn all the ins and outs of object Pascal. So sometimes a quick answer is enough.
On the subject of documentation I have found the CHMs and PDFs to be both helpful and frustrating. The CHMs are particularly frustrating because there are many "broken links" that give the error can't find page or something similar. I have found the
Free Pascal wiki to be the most helpful place to go to find help on my own though many of the concepts that it is assumed I am supposed to understand are still above my level. Honestly, as someone else pointed out, a search engine is often very helpful, much more so than the included documentation with Lazarus.
Now to my final comment. Yeah I know you're all sighing with relief.
I appreciate the help I have received here. I hate to see the answer to a simple question turn into such a contentious thing. Both sides were right. You should learn the basics of the syntax of the language you are programming in and sometimes a quick answer is all that is needed. I can't tell you how many times I have sat and spent sometimes hours looking at some piece of code I had written trying to figure out why it isn't working only to have someone look over my shoulder and say "you're using a greater than when you need a less than equals operator" or some such thing. Of course I knew that but I was not seeing the "trees for the forest" to twist a metaphor. The code had gotten in the way and I totally overlooked the detail.
Thanks again for all the help I have received over the years.