Nancy Corbett wrote:
> I still feel like I'm coming from behind
> and always will. The more I learn, the more I realize that there is to
> know. I will always be afraid that my questions are dumb. And, in fact,
> they always will be to someone several miles ahead of me on the road.
In some areas, you always, ALWAYS, will be. Don't let it worry you.
Dancer (my husband) is one of THE top people in the world about the
HTTP protocol - especially in a practical sense. He's not one of the
theorists, but he can make it dance to his tune.
But about the linux kernel, he defers to Alan Cox and, of course, Linus.
And he always will. And it doesn't bother him.
Your questions aren't dumb. I've been reading tech-support humour
tales, and thinking about why people make the mistakes they do. If
you look at the kind of abstraction people use that has them looking
for 'any' keys or putting CD-ROMs in 5.25" drives, they're actually
applying quite advanced thinking. [1] They're simply ignorant.
If only they'd asked, they might not have broken their CD-ROM drives.
There are a LOT of roads in computing. Pick yours, and go down it.
Noone sensible will care that you're behind them on /their/ road,
especially since you're ahead of them on /yours/. And the ones who
are sharing your road, but ahead of you, should be happy to help.
If they're not, they're idiots. :) They won't be walking that road
forever, and without others on it, that road will stop existing.
Jenn V.
[1] The person who was given a password of 'monday', and on tuesday
couldn't get in because he was typing 'tuesday', for instance, was
successfully correlating 'password' with 'days of the week'. The fact
that this was not the correct correlation doesn't change the fact that
correlation is an abstract form of thought, and indicative of
intelligence. In an AI research lab, the scientists would be cheering
for the fact that they got correlation at all!
--
"Do you ever wonder if there's a whole section of geek culture
you miss out on by being a geek?" - Dancer.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Jenn Vesperman http://www.simegen.com/~jenn/
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