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I have this odd fear that sharing what I learned today will make me look stupid.

“Look it’s 2023 this dude just learned about http error codes”. Silly example but you get the idea.



This is one of the reasons I'm so keen on publishing this kind of thing - I like to make the point that you can have 20+ years of experience and still celebrate learning something basic like how to write a for loop in Bash.

No-one knows everything. I respect anyone who is constantly learning new things, no matter how basic those things might be.

Here's the most basic one I published recently: https://til.simonwillison.net/html/scroll-to-text


I love this post for this exact reason:

https://overreacted.io/things-i-dont-know-as-of-2018/

It's written by Dan Abramov who has been instrumental in React's development


That is such a good read.


Such a great post.


The TIL-framing is not integral to writing and publishing little snippets. You can always omit a framing and stick only to the information.


Don't be afraid to take advantage of Cunningham. if you try asking or looking something up and it's not accessible, you'd be surprised how many people would come swarming once you start writing about it, departed to correct you ad show you links to valuable tribal knowledge.


Turn off the comments ;) Or just publish anonymously.

I was actually considering doing this on gemini, because I've got that fear too. An append-only log habit is definitely helping me lately, why not make it (semi-)public?

I think there's a single meachanism underneath both this and rubber ducking. There's something about getting your thoughts in order at a verbal (or textual) level that aids understanding.


Anyone who thinks they don't have gaping holes in their knowledge, and criticizes others for it, is probably suffering from a severe case of Dunning-Kruger.


Yeah, if I see someone criticizing others because "that's so obvious, everyone knows that" the person I lose respect for is that critic.


Obligatory XKCD : https://xkcd.com/1053/


If you always take yourself as being stupid, you will never have this fear in the first place ;)


You don't need to fear looking stupid. You gotta learn about it sometime ;)




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