Where's a good place for a beginner to ask dumbass questions?

All I know is a little Python and I’m trying to build something in Bokeh. Non technical background. Going great so far but I often get stuck when something doesn’t work as intended and I spend hours trying to work out what’s wrong. I’ve usually done something wrong with Bokeh but sometimes it’s just my crappy Python coding, and identifying the problem is a big issue.

I’ve been looking for somewhere to ask someone basic questions, such as

• how come legend items rotate incorrect colors as the selection is changed?
• how do I make this datatable do a callback to show the filtered data?
• how do I avoid both creating / running a server and writing Javascript?

It seems like in this forum all of you guys really know what you’re doing and I’d feel out of place asking such stupid questions here, and copying messes of code to go with it. Is there a Bokeh Discord server or anything? Some other kind of channel? Or should I just go ahead and try making a fool of myself here and probably have my threads deleted?

Thank you so much for any help!

Hi tvkyq,

Here! Please post here! I know exactly how you feel; learning Bokeh was a lot of copy-and-paste-and-hope when I first started using it, and if I had known about the support forum at the time, I would have saved HOURS. If not days.

Please don’t feel awkward about any question, especially when you’ve tried to do something according to the docs and you’re finding it doesn’t work. I say this for a few reasons:

1. It highlights areas in the documentation and/or user guide that could use improvement.
2. It’s likely that if you’re having trouble, someone else is having or would have similar trouble, and just by posting on this forum we’ve shortened their search when they do.
3. In some cases, it could even expose usability issues and use cases that are worth a rethink in the code.
4. We want your Bokeh experience to be great, with you making neato interactive data visualizations, --NOT frustration, grinding away at some counterintuitive python quirk.

Plus, all three of your questions sound like great questions of general interest. I’ve investigated a couple Legend ones lately, so I’m personally curious about behavior you’re seeing there. Please don’t be shy about pasting in some code. You’ll see a wide range of coding styles and abilities if you look through the Discourse. Everybody is learning all the time.

So please! Post here, and welcome!

Okay, great! Thank you for being so understanding and supportive to someone who doesn’t really know what they’re doing. I’m hopeful I might now save a few hours of wasted time!

I’ve just posted this question about the datatable callback, and hopefully it goes somewhere.

Thanks for the help! More questions soon!