Meta Learning the Hurd Stuff

[Joshua Branson]

Hello,

Summary:  beating myself up because I'm not an expert hurd developer
won't help me learn faster.


So this is going to be a short positive critique of my current learning
strategy, and it will hopefully help me to learn better.  I realize that
this is slightly off topic, but if we are a community, it would be nice
if I could occasionally talk about my struggles.  If this kind of email
doesn't belong on the list, please let me know.

So yesterday, I decided to write a GNU/Hurd translator in gnu guile.  I
am completely positive that I do not have the technical expertise to do
this, so I figured I'd give it a try anyway and just push myself.  I
fired up the Hurd in a vm, and tried connecting to the hurd file via
emacs and tramp.  I couldn't do it.  I couldn't figure out why Tramp
wasn't working.

I started to tell myself, that the reason tramp isn't working is because
I'm stupid, and I am a failure.  I finally figured out that Emacs thinks:

"/ssh:joshua@localhost#2222" is a local file.

BUT

"/ssh:joshua@localhost#2222:~/" is a remote file

It was such a simple mistake, but I was so mad at the world and myself
that this tiny problem was keeping me from coding.  This was when I
discovered, that if I keep telling myself, "I hate trying to get this to
work" over and over again, then I'm going to have a very hard time
developing for the Hurd.

Instead I should say, "I'm glad that developing for the Hurd is
difficult.  This gives me an opportunity to learn something new
everyday!  I'm greatful that developing for the Hurd presents new
problems for me everyday, because it proves my resilience."


Thanks for listening,

Joshua