you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him understand the experience of what it’s like to drink water
by horse I mean human, by human I mean body, and by lead I mean follow
i.e. when sounding smart. you shouldn't try to defend yourself, because the emphasis is usually that you're trying to sound smart. and you'll usually end up completely off topic (if you listen) or become dismissive, so it's better to be objective rather than political
with reasonable speculation (or gossip), you can sound just like the person you’re defending yourself of being. it does require some clarity (to defend yourself) but not everyone cares to listen, because they want to hear a specific opinion expressed or invoke regret. regardless of what the truth is or what is claimed to be their system of beliefs. the easiest way to keep some people happy is to lie to them. what a crazy world we live in.
@paleoludic people tend to breathe from the inside out, instead of the outside in. if there's more to judge then they'll speculate or come up with theories that prove their point, but they hesitate to tell something that's non falsifiable. everything is falsifiable by default (almost)
you don't have to have experience with c or c++ to understand the interface. at the lowest level, effective system calls and code infrastructure will always be in assembly