Howtoask

How to ask questions as a user of Yade (or any other computer code)

If you are directed to this page, it could mean that you asked a question to one of our mailing lists in an inappropriate way. Please check the tips below and try to improve your question.

If you spontaneously decided to read this page: congratulations! We hope it will be useful.

0. Before asking any question, you may consider searching through the mailing list. Probably someone faced a similar problem before and got a solution. The most convenient way to search among previous questions is probably typing some keywords together with "site:https://answers.launchpad.net/yade" in your favourite search engine.

1. Please don't send questions directly by emails to yade-users. Instead, use the "Answer" tool provided by launchpad, which helps sorting questions and answers. Once, a question is asked there, you will still receive answers in your mailbox, and you can "reply" to them with your email client. When the question is answered please mark it as such in the launchpad interface. If you want to show appreciation towards a particular decisive answer, you may click the button "This solved my question" (the corresponding user will be rewarded with Launchpad karma !)

2. Whenever you have a problem, try to describe it in a concise and accurate way. Some context can be useful sometimes (I'm trying to achieve this or that, I'm beginner/advanced/expert in Python, etc.) but in most cases it does not help a lot. They should be very short anyway. Please avoid long discussions.

3. Together with problem statement, send also a script which will let others reproduce your problem. Do your best to send it as a MWE (Minimal Working Example™), which is:

• minimal = short. It is difficult to find mistakes in long pieces of code and it is usually much more annoying. Any post-processing command should for instance be banned.
• working = before sending, test it to be sure it is working (it has no syntax errors etc.).

The MWE should actually be the smallest script possible showing the same problem you faced probably in a much longer script, initially.

4. Together with the above information, send also the version of Yade you are using. If your question is linked to compilation issues, tell which operating system you use.

5. Do not merge different questions in one single post, even if - in your mind - they are connected to one single project. If your question received satisfying answer(s), mark it answered immediately. Do not use the same thread to jump to another question, open a new question instead.

6. Train your empathy on this example, a fictious but archetypal question which typically appears without further info. What is the probability for programming gurus to understand the problem in your opinion?

"Hello, I was trying to modelize a problem but python was returning an error. So, I changed some engine but now yade crashes. Can you please help?"