A word invented by Robert Anson Heinlein in his book Stranger in a Strange Land. It is probably best translated as a deep understanding of a subject. Wikipedia also have a page about the word Grok.
About Ryan Grange...
Born in the early 70s, I have been working with computers since I was six. My first language was Logo. I learned to use it for its list processing abilities and not just to make the turtle draw shapes (though I did have it draw a lot of shapes).
I spent almost nine years in the US Navy, half of it on the submarine USS Scranton SSN-756 as an electronics and communications technician. I currently work for one of the dot-coms that survived the 2000 meltdown as an IT Manager, systems administrator, and programmer.
I have worked with many languages and document formats in my life, right now, the major ones I spend time working with are (in alphabetical order to avoid favoritism)...
Bash, BASIC, C#, CSS, HTML, JavaScript, Perl, PHP, SQL (MySQL, PostgreSQL, T-SQL), VB.Net, VBA, VBScript, Visual Basic, XML
Other languages I've worked with, but either not recently or not very often...
Assembly, C, C++, Java, Logo, Pascal, Perl, QuickBASIC, Tcl-Tk
I work with both Linux and Windows operating systems on a regular basis. My children are becoming accustomed to switching back and forth between the OS's without feeling the need to relearn anything. I have a cousin working with the One Laptop Per Child program on some of the software that runs on their XO. I spend any more time helping him and I'll be adding Python to the languages list above.
I have worked with the following Linux distributions (again alphabetical to avoid favoritism): CentOS, Debian, Damn Small Linux, Fedora, Gentoo, Mandriva (Mandrake), Red Hat, Sorcerer, Ubuntu, White Box Enterprise Linux. Yes, I can remember when you had to recompile a kernel to get your sound card working.
Windows versions I have worked with: 3.1, Workgroups 3.11, 95, 98, 98SE, NT4 Server, NT4 Workstation, ME, 2000 Professional, 2000 Server, XP Home, XP Professional, 2003 Server, Vista Home Ultimate
I have also done some technical assistance for Mac OSX users I work with, mostly involving network and VPN configuration.
