21 Sep 2025 ------------ Thoughts: Learning Three logs of "Thoughts" feels like an out-of-trend problem, but anyways. Today my granny told me to stop teaching my little one difficult things, when I told my son boys have XY genes and girls have XX genes. I remember she was also a bit annoyed when I explained to him why it isn't always wrong to cross the road when the pedestrian light is red. There are quite a few more times. I always think about learning. I also think about how others learn. As a techie type, when I first got involved into presentations and meetings, I was always being told that my explanations were too difficult for normies. I struggled for quite a while to be honest, because to me, explainations without details didn't sound complete. It took quite some time for me to understand that not everyone needs details, or more precisely, cares about them. Over the time, I think I learned a bit. Can't explain how but I learned to shorten the replies or just answer with the most typical scenario, a bit like how AI picks the choice with highest confidence level as the answer, when it has probably tens if not hundreds of more possible answers. Of course there are people who will think and ask more questions, but most of them simply were not interested in verifying the answers. That was a long time ago and I thought it was the way to communicate to non- technical people, until one time I had a meeting with a group of scientists, and one of them asked about DMZ. Occationally, I would be surprised to hear some IT terms and knowledges that I wouldn't expect to be mentioned by some non-techies. I started to think why. Like even if it is some critical information for work, they have absolute right to delegate it to IT people. I realised that "normie" is some product from "normal people" underestimating "normal people". People, regardless of profession, can learn as good as anyone. This matches with what I believed myself. I began to think that giving short but technical answers isn't fundamentally wrong, nor mentioning a couple technical terms like SQL query, Java, responsive design, etc. Of course there are people who are very sensitive about being blasted with techie, nerdy knowledges. I had a colleague who was very concerned when I told him about a container image. Before hearing that the only step is to double click on a batch file, he has already started to voice out his concerns about how not technical he is. I was quite happy when I heard from him that he has modified the batch file to make it work the way he likes. I also quite often see people, who said they are not working in IT industry, to be able to root Android, patch this and that, write shell scripts, manage Linux servers, etc. I believe these are proofs that "IT stuffs" are not exclusive to "IT people". I understand depending on the experience level, one can be too overwhelmed when an expert tries to explain something in scholar ways. It applies to photography, design, cooking, even making coffee. But if one wants to learn, they can. I think this is the same for my child. Going through a red light when driving is no good, but what's the point to tell him that it is absolutely wrong to cross the road on a red pedestrian light, when it isn't uncommon to see people doing it? It may be a bit too early for him to know what means by good faith and common sense, but that doesn't mean it is too early for him to hear about it. Sometimes the kid could actually say something mature, and it always amaze me that children are indeed learning machines. A long while ago, I was once really frustrated because I thought I would never be able to catch up with older people on some very specific knowledge, say C or kernel hacking. I still don't really think that I could catch up with the very knowledgeable people I often find on forums and places, but far less frustrated. I got to a point that I can start telling younger people I am old. The "time advantage" that I once regarded as a worldly unfair handicap for younger people doesn't seem to hold true for myself. In my learning plan, I still have C, serial programming, USB, more Bluetooth, microcontrollers then hopefully RISC-V, and definitely more BSD knowledge. See? Very ashamed so that I once told my son, when he refused to do his homework, that anybody can go in a blink from 4 years old to 40 years old doing nothing. I think this is the neat part. I have come to a point that I think I can tell when a problem is due to lack of experience, be it myself or others. But that literally means that for younger people, what they need to do is simply to gain the experience. It is always surprising when I look at CV type of self introductions from fresh graduates or junior workers. It's like they have lots of personal projects, some even invented something, have their own companies, knows loads of new technologies, etc. I know some of those could be simply a way of adding more contents into the resume by having a better description on a simple achievement, but still I will be interested in knowing. I just can be older and useless. And even more respect to the more senior people who know the ins and outs of something, for it isn't a guarantee but fruit of life-long continuous learning. Knowing all these actually makes me feel happier. And I am happy to overwhelm my son with "difficult" things, as I believe he is always learning.