A confession: when someone emails to a large technical list a "simple" question, I’ve sometimes in the past felt a sense of "How can you not know this? Everyone knows this! We solved this in 2004!" But of course, everyone can’t possibly know even "the basics"; there’s no such thing as "herd knowledge" among software developers. There’s no "All Developers Everywhere" mailing list (thankfully), and there’s no monthly "Developer’s Journal" which new grads are forced to pore through until they’re fully caught up (again, for the best I expect).
There’s also no getting around the fact that 2004 is starting to feel like a very long time ago — we’re closer to 2030 than 2004 even now, and people born in 2004 will be starting Comp Sci degrees all too soon.
