Yesterday, I visited Seattle to give a talk about Repoze . The talk brought a pretty good-sized crowd, something like 25 people. I was relieved that people actually asked questions at the end, as if they might actually be interested in the software. I managed to dodge the hard ones. The folks there were particularly clueful. For example, while "demonstrating" Deliverance (of which I'm woefully clueless), someone asked me to explain the "rules" file. I had to ask "does anyone know XPath?" Not my best moment. ;-)
In any case, it was a lot of fun. Thanks to Veda Williams and Olympus.net, whom sponsored my presentation at the Seattle Plone Gathering . Thanks also to Andrew Burkhalter who mediated the talk logistics. And thanks to everyone who showed up!
Don't beat yourself up. The ability to engineer technologies that can keep up with standards like this is far more valuable, IMO, than being able to memorize their paramaters.
Ciao!
J