Re: don't show the $-bar that indicates text before and/or after the window view, horizontally

[Rustom Mody <rustompmody@gmail.com>]

On Thursday, July 25, 2013 1:22:45 PM UTC+5:30, Emanuel Berg wrote:
> OK, Mody: 1) I have a degree in CS myself, probably not as fancy
> as yours, but fancy enough to know this is not CS, but CP
> (computer practice). You can't pull rank.

No rank or pulling. Basic education-stuff.
You want to learn calculus? Ok first need to clear algebra.
Algebra? First need arithmetic.
So... Basic stuff: abc before xyz.

Eli asked you to read some basic stuff before grappling with more advanced stuff.

emacs is quite a formidable piece of software -- hopefully that you will agree with. And in dealing with that, listening to the sequencing suggestions of insider-guys (like Eli) seems like a good idea.
eg if you were teaching emacs to a noob, would you not put C-x C-f before M-x find-file before M-: (find-file) ?
Ok Eli spoke more roughly/rudely than necessary.  Maybe there are other contextual reasons for that?... Dunno...

> 2) And, I happen to be a teacher myself. 

If you are serious about that (and everyone who is trying to learn something needs to be serious at least about teaching himself) you can take it from someone who has taught some thousands of students: the single biggest problem in teaching/learning is closing the meta-cognitive loop. Or less jargoned: How to debug yourself.

It matters little
- how much you know
- how hard you work
- which degrees you possess
- which muscles bulge how much

Yeah it matters... but very little compared to the ability to debug.

You could debug emacs with gdb.  Maybe guys like Eli do such things occasionally... Dunno.
For more ordinary mortals, edebug is usually more than enough heavyweight.
Drew's suggestion to use customize (note as a debugging tool) is even more lightweight. (I personally hate customize as a customization tool though its neat for exploration)

And Eli's suggestion to approach the corpus of stuff inside emacs in a certain order is more lightweight still.

So...
Its really quite easy to NOT be in the category to which Dunning-Kruger apply:
Just be ready/easy to say: "Yeah... I dont know... How to learn???"

[The wikipedia article is as usual boringly written.
It links to http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/the-anosognosics-dilemma-1/?_r=0  which explains better ]

Let me end with something that we veteran teachers always fear: The Einstein effect.
One of Einstein's school teachers told him he was an idiot and a useless who would never make anything of his life.
And so when you cross to the other side and become a teacher, theres always the nagging fear: Is there some idiot in my class who will become Einstein in future?