I was talking to someone at a vintage computer meetup this weekend and we ended up talking about "fear" in exactly this context - fear of asking, or fear that we couldn't know something or that it was too hard. From my perspective it was for exactly things like signals that were not intuitive or broke my mental model of linear programming (threads too, when they first became popular). He was an artist and his fear had been around not understanding what other people are doing with their art, or if his art was getting his message across.
In both our cases, we benefitted from having mentors that helped explain (like this fine article does) by breaking things down and then... letting us learn from the broken down pieces rather than all at once. A mentor can help us conceptualize difficult concepts by showing us, intuitively where to draw our abstractions.
Overcoming the fear for both of us came down to acknowledging it, "owning it", and being ok with it. (Sorry if this is rambling, but it was one of the most rewarding conversations I've had in years, and touched at least tangentially on this article.)
(And I'm still have fear of MMUs, but I've never had to write anything at that level, although it's on my programming bucket list...)
In both our cases, we benefitted from having mentors that helped explain (like this fine article does) by breaking things down and then... letting us learn from the broken down pieces rather than all at once. A mentor can help us conceptualize difficult concepts by showing us, intuitively where to draw our abstractions.
Overcoming the fear for both of us came down to acknowledging it, "owning it", and being ok with it. (Sorry if this is rambling, but it was one of the most rewarding conversations I've had in years, and touched at least tangentially on this article.)
(And I'm still have fear of MMUs, but I've never had to write anything at that level, although it's on my programming bucket list...)