Oop, you did take it the wrong way. Let's try again: It's not necessarily that I don't think you can't learn, it's that even if you do doing what you want to do correctly is hard even for the people who've been doing it for much longer (again, read the Schneier book).

Sure amateurs can launch rockets into space now, but I wouldn't sign up for a ride from the guy that just picked up a copy of Rocketry For Dummies two months ago and thinks he's the second coming of Goddard or von Braun. I'd be more comfortable with someone like Burt Ruttan that has lots of experience in a related field (aerospace) who's studied prior art and is building on top of it.

Likewise you should be wary using the protocol written by someone who just read the IO::Socket man page last week. If you're going to move to a new protocol, you want it to have been written by someone familiar with protocol design who uses what's currently considered accepted best practices.

And as for why you don't use telnet, it has no encryption whatsoever. Any information (such as your login and password) are sent in the clear over the network meaning any schmuck with a network tap at any point between source and destination can see everything. SSH was designed to correct this deficiency and also provide stronger authentication than was used by the Berkeley "r" services (rsh, rlogin).

(Did I mention read the Schneier book? Because you really should.)

Update: Gah, got my Ruttans mixed up; had Dick, his brother, instead. ENOCAFFEINE.