Yeah - more than a bit sketchy, but it is a broad field and not everybody has the same level of understanding on all of it. I've known crackerjack digital designers who would have trouble understanding how a motor works, as well as power engineers that are flummoxed by a latching shift register. "EE" covers such a wide range of topics that having the letters is almost meaningless. I understand the TS is trying to do something quick and doesn't have the luxury of gaining the necessary understanding. It may or may not come back to bite him, but I wish him well.

Yea, I can understand the lack of expertise in the wide field but some of the questions, explanations and responses to the explanations just make me go, what?.

To the OP, It's not a criticism of you or a person trying to get up to speed at a job because we've all been there.

 

Yea, I can understand the lack of expertise in the wide field but some of the questions, explanations and responses to the explanations just make me go, what?.

To the OP, It's not a criticism of you or a person trying to get up to speed at a job because we've all been there.

I heartily agree. When you find yourself up against it, the smart thing to do is ask for help. If you can't quite grok the help you are getting, you need to step back to first principles. Trust me you'll get to your goal faster if you do that. For example: Take a pair of opamp datasheets (one normal and one rail-to-rail) and compare them side by side to see how they differ. Keep doing that until the lightbulb turns on.

My war story is the struggle I had to understand and implement CRC algorithms with the primitive processors we had at the time. There were few useful references, we did not have the internet, and nobody I knew had any better information than I did. Over a 6-motnth period I became the defacto CRC guru in my organization, with applications to multiple peripheral devices.

 

When you find yourself up against it the smart thing to do is ask for help. If you can't quite grok the help you are getting, you need to step back to first principles. Trust you'll get to your goal faster if you do that. For example: Take a pair of opamp datasheets (one norma and on rail-to-rail) and compare them side by side to see how they differ. Keep doing doing that until the lightbulb turns on.

Exactly. My worry is that first principles (often boring things not directly related to X) are being skipped (or glossed over) in the educational process. Yes, I know, that's been said since the fire was first used to cook a meal. People seem to understand things at a high level fairly well, know the solutions to standard questions but seem to draw a blank or conclusions that are IMO illogical to first principles when confronted with things that are novel to them.

https://fs.blog/first-principles/

I don’t know what’s the matter with people: they don’t learn by understanding; they learn by some other way—by rote or something. Their knowledge is so fragile!
Richard Feynman

Fragile is a great word for it.