Re: Just shoot me now

[Tommy Kelly <tommy.kelly@verilab.com>]

Sivaram Neelakantan <nsivaram.net@gmail.com> writes:
> Funnily, mail splitting worked for me the first time I tried apart
> from a few minor misses.  But mine were simple ones
>
> (setq nnmail-split-methods
>       '(("sas-l" "^Subject:.*SAS-L*")
> ;; 	("ctan-ann" "^From:.*ctan-ann*")
>  	("mail.misc" "")))
>
> is all I did.

Ah but see that's simple splitting. That's for girls (cue slaps for
sexism and threats to get Sacha Chua to kick my ass). Real Men use
*fancy* splitting.  And it's fancy splitting that's destroying my will
to live. :-)

> WhyTF, I didn't
> understand it the first time around or for that matter many other
> times before, I don't know.

Exactly right. It's normal, once you become more expert to forget what
it was like to be a newb.

But a key component of writing good docs, much as in good teaching, is
precisely the ability to rewind your mind to that first time around,
remember what it was like to not know what you now know, and to plot a
path forwards for the newbie. 

Most people find that hard. The few that can are called good
teachers. The very best of those are called Richard Feynman.

> Of course, the fault is mostly mine that I make feeble attempts at
> learning elisp....

Well yes and no. To me it's not unreasonable that if you want to get to
grips with the dark underbelly of Gnus (or anything in emacs) you have
to roll your sleeves up and dig into lisp. But that doesn't mean the
documentation is fine.

Again -- lest Lars, Andreas and the other Noble Writers Of Code get fed
up with what may seem like whining, just keep hacking guys. You are much 
appreciated. 

Tommy