Time and effort, was netstat and sort

johnny bobby bee

I suppose we all have our own reasons for contributing. In my case, it's the "pay it forward" idea: I learned a lot from Usenet and I want to pay for that.

I'm also driven because I never found any of this stuff easy. Still don't. Man pages are often of little help, and while Google certainly makes it better than it was when I started playing with this stuff (1967), it can still be very hard to find resources that explain what you want in a way you can understand.

Part of the problem is those lucky folks who do find it all so easy. For them, it's all trivial, it all makes instant sense. They say "RTFM" or "use the source, Luke" because that's all they need. Not all of them are like that, of course: some of the uber-geeks have real patience with us mere mortals and do get down on their knees to help us tie our shoelaces. But so often they don't explain the one thing we really don't get, because they just never had any problem with that part - it was too trivial. And that's where I try to help: I feel the pain of not understanding because so often I struggle to understand. When I write about something I now do understand, I try hard to remember the things that blocked me when I didn't, and try to explain them. I don't always succeed, of course, but those are my intentions.

So I post to Usenet, and I put articles and other stuff on my web site. The guru's and super-geeks will find my stuff naive and sometimes wrong (and of course I correct it then), but a lot of ordinary folks may get a little help now and then. That's why I make the effort.

-- Tony Lawrence