💾 Archived View for gemini.ctrl-c.club › ~fsan › 2021 › teaching.gmi captured on 2023-04-26 at 13:59:50. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content

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Teaching and feeling like an impostor.

I know almost nothing about computers. This is quite evident, I understand little about the things I use if I was asked to write an OS I know I wouldn't be able to and I'm not talking about something fancy, I'm talking about "boots up, presents a shell and can run more than 1 program at a time" kinda thing. I "know" how ext works but I wouldn't be able to write a good driver for ext4 and the same can be said about a PS/2 keyboard.

I admit to knowing what namespaces are and how to use them but their implementation eludes me.

I can write the crappiest webserver you would have ever seen and I'm pretty sure I could write an FTP server though I've never tried to. I don't know the entirety of the electronic mail transport (Sure I know about IMAP/SMTP/POP3 and I can configure and mantain a mailserver but I have no in-depth knowledge though I suspect very few people have).

I know a little bit about systems administration but I would be hard-pressed to reimplement or even truly understand every tool I use.

Really the name awk is a nice fit since awk is always helpful for awkward things (a friend told me that joke and I'm taking full credit for it).

There are a lot of things I don't know how to do so when I sit down and I try to teach others I sometimes feel like a fraud.

Maybe my standards are way too high.

At least I know I have enough things to learn to last me more than a lifetime.

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