Maybe this is just a me thing. Most, not all, swimming pools have a deep end and a shallow end of the pool. Typically the shallow end is about 3 feet (1 meter) deep and the deep end 10 feet (just over 3 meters). Now generally when one is a non-swimmer and learning to swim it is not advisable to throw oneself into ten feet of water. Doing so generally has some bad consequences. You learn to swim in the shallow end of the pool. You start slowly.

Learning electronics is similar (to my way of thinking) to learning to swim. One should start with the basics, things like basic DC theory and all those rules and formulas. Then move along to AC theory and along the road. It is for example unwise to jump into advance calculus without learning the basic fundamentals of mathematics.

Here is what I fail miserably to understand. Why do we see thread after thread where the people posting have yet to get a handle on the basics want to create or invent advanced projects? Create and invent being their more popular terms. Many times it is not just no understanding of the basics but no desire to even learn the basics, just have someone make them a circuit to do whatever they want to do. Maybe it's me in old age but it seems many people just want stuff handed to them like they are owed something. Only a few seem to want to start with learning the basics and working for what they want.

My view on all of this is quite simple. If someone is stupid enough to jump right into the deep end of the pool they deserve to drown. This actually could help clean up the gene pool. Anyone else seem to notice this or would it be just a me thing?

Ron

 

Maybe this is just a me thing. Most, not all, swimming pools have a deep end and a shallow end of the pool. Typically the shallow end is about 3 feet (1 meter) deep and the deep end 10 feet (just over 3 meters). Now generally when one is a non-swimmer and learning to swim it is not advisable to throw oneself into ten feet of water. Doing so generally has some bad consequences. You learn to swim in the shallow end of the pool. You start slowly.

Learning electronics is similar (to my way of thinking) to learning to swim. One should start with the basics, things like basic DC theory and all those rules and formulas. Then move along to AC theory and along the road. It is for example unwise to jump into advance calculus without learning the basic fundamentals of mathematics.

Here is what I fail miserably to understand. Why do we see thread after thread where the people posting have yet to get a handle on the basics want to create or invent advanced projects? Create and invent being their more popular terms. Many times it is not just no understanding of the basics but no desire to even learn the basics, just have someone make them a circuit to do whatever they want to do. Maybe it's me in old age but it seems many people just want stuff handed to them like they are owed something. Only a few seem to want to start with learning the basics and working for what they want.

My view on all of this is quite simple. If someone is stupid enough to jump right into the deep end of the pool they deserve to drown. This actually could help clean up the gene pool. Anyone else seem to notice this or would it be just a me thing?

Ron

I think you are on to something, but it's been going on longer than you think. We had an honor code at the University of Michigan Engineering School. Violations were rare, but they shook the Earth when they happened. The cheaters always had a sense of entitlement at the core of their justification. They also had to get their degree from another institution.

 

Help those you can and let the others drown while everyone watches.

According to my family I started learning about electrical stuff when I was about 3 - 4 years old by running from one end of my grandparents halfway to the other trying to figure out how a three way light switch worked. Pretty long and winding road from there to here and a lot more to travel yet.

Mostly what I see is the same things we all saw growing up. Very few ever had or will have the natural want plus patience and perseverance it takes to really become knowledgeable and uniquely good at something. Most want something until they find out just how hard it really is to achieve then they blow it off as being not worth it and chase after the next popular thing that catches their eye and so on.

The only thing they ever truly become good at is not being good at anything. Just like the majority of people around them. They become world renowned experts on nothing and have a world of co-experts on nothing as well to back them up.

 

The cheaters always had a sense of entitlement at the core of their justification. They also had to get their degree from another institution.

Unfortunately too many of those entitled cheaters got into positions in the world where they now have made it so that their views and practices are the standard and norm and those who hold any degree of honor and code of ethics are the bad guys that are to be shamed, belittled and discredited for their insistence on pushing honesty, integrity and open minded rational reasoning regarding anything.

 

I don't know. Suppose you want to fly. Do you retrace every step the Wright brothers made, and then learn to build a jet engine? Some people would love that process but most just want to get off the ground ASAP. I wouldn't say either was right or wrong, just different.

The fact that people look for shortcuts is understandable, and even a good thing in many circumstances. We need both the people that create building blocks and the people that use them. It's a great testament to the skills of those block creators that unknowing people can use those blocks to build other things.

Those of us that learned things at a deep level will always be a little annoyed by those that skate by, but it's never going to change.

As Hawking said, to make an apple pie you first have to create the universe.

 

Many times it is not just no understanding of the basics but no desire to even learn the basics, just have someone make them a circuit to do whatever they want to do. Maybe it's me in old age but it seems many people just want stuff handed to them like they are owed something.

I have a simple approach to such people: I just don't help them. Let them thrash and flounder.

Anyone else seem to notice this or would it be just a me thing?

No, it's not just you.

What boggles my mind is that with the Internet, and search engines like Google, thousands of times more information on electronics is readily available compared to when I started learning electronics back in the 50's and 60's; back then, it was hard to get your hands on good info. You really had to work at it. Nowadays, all you have to do is do a quick Google search and a wealth of stuff comes up: data sheets, application notes, tutorials, articles and even complete books.

Yet even with this unprecedented availability, we still seem awash sometimes in clueless idjits who refuse to RTFDS.

 

I don't see this site as deep end of the pool, which requires one or 2 life guards. If it was the case, you wouldn't have so many experienced members.

kv

 

You don't need to be Johnny Weissmuller to not drown in the deep end of the pool.

One of the problems today is too much advanced information for beginners without the fundamentals needed to see how it all interconnects. This top/down information stream seems to form islands of information in their heads as sets of disjointed facts. So even if they have access to almost unlimited information the ability to grok that information as a system is missing. Most of the budding learners today think that electronics and circuits are science but its not. It's a technology of mainly electrical&material sciences with rules and laws based on the physics of electricity, space and matter. I don't think you need a undergraduate degree in physics for electronics but I think we need to concentrate on the basics of charge, electric and magnetic fields and energy (all the boring stuff) first to build a solid foundation for actual electronics. Without a field-based understanding of circuit theory, many electrical and electronic system processes remain mysteries.

 

Yet even with this unprecedented availability, we still seem awash sometimes in clueless idjits who refuse to RTFDS.

Most people don't know how to read one. They never learned the language so to speak so thusly all those words and numbers and graphs have no meaning to them to understand.
That and their attention span is so short that if it isn't in a 30 word or less sentence that can be grasped with a simple thought they already think they understand they won't focus long enough to ever have it sink in far enough to be of any value now or ever.

I've noticed that issue in most every forum I have ever spent any time on. You can have 50 people there who worked with or in a certain field for years yet when an in depth topic of discussion comes up you're lucky if you have 2 - 3 that can follow along beyond anything past the bare basics of things.

Then too often, to make it worse, you have 20 more who will fight you tooth and nail to the end to justify that what you and the few who do know things beyond their level say is not true or has no value or significance (because you inadvertently made it very obvious they don't know as much about the subject as they claimed to) or that none of you and your life's work, to get to such a depth of understanding, are of any real significance and value even though it the people like you who create and build the very things they worked with every day of their lives.


Ignorance I can handle just fine. It simply doesn't know any different and has no malice over it.

Arrogance I can handle in context. If someone can show they have a understanding and experience of something so far beyond the typical persons depth and range they have the right to it.

Blustering fools with big mouths and small minds singular or in groups. No way. I'm out. Stupid and arrogant with no capacity to learn can't be fixed or reasoned with and it has no shame to stop it either.

 

I don't see this site as deep end of the pool, which requires one or 2 life guards. If it was the case, you wouldn't have so many experienced members.

I see it like being able to swim. Once you have the basics the depth of the water is largely irrelevant. It's the ability to stay afloat when things get rough that matters. Or as with knowing how to scuba dive being able to drop below the surface and get far enough under the floating noise you don't have to deal with it.

I think the all the major members of this forum are seasoned capable swimmers that can handle a bit of surface turbulence. A quite a few can even take a fair storm without difficulty as well and rather enjoy it. And a few can even go down into the depths of certain areas and topics that most everyone else will drown in.

Then there's the few odd balls here that are half dolphin half shark that will come to the rescue of a newbie in the shallows and nurse them back to safer water yet at the same time have no problem dragging some arrogant floundering half wit whose clearly way in over his head down and tearing them to shreds in a blood bath of cold hard factual revelation of just how little they know about something while everyone else watches.

 

I find that too many new posters with no knowledge want to be told how to fix switch mode power supplies. Even for people that know what they are doing it is not always an easy task. Even when you tell them the potential dangers they still seem to want to continue. Even without them providing a schematic they seem to think we can give an answer like replace C6. Some of them do not even know simple maths. Recently one who I assume was at university did not even know that the circumference of a circle was 2 * Pi * R.

Les.

 

Pie are NOT square!

Pie are Round!

(MIT - class of 2020)

 

You obviously have'nt come across Four Square pies. We has them here, they be square!

 

Maybe this is just a me thing. Most, not all, swimming pools have a deep end and a shallow end of the pool. Typically the shallow end is about 3 feet (1 meter) deep and the deep end 10 feet (just over 3 meters). Now generally when one is a non-swimmer and learning to swim it is not advisable to throw oneself into ten feet of water. Doing so generally has some bad consequences. You learn to swim in the shallow end of the pool. You start slowly.

Learning electronics is similar (to my way of thinking) to learning to swim.

If the student can't touch the bottom at either end, how does he/she know which end is "the deep end"?

 

I don't think you're wrong, but to play Devil's advocate, you don't know what you don't know. Probably a lot of people don't realize what they're asking for. They don't realize that the pool isn't a bathtub.

 

What boggles my mind is that with the Internet, and search engines like Google, thousands of times more information on electronics is readily available compared to when I started learning electronics back in the 50's and 60's; back then, it was hard to get your hands on good info. You really had to work at it. Nowadays, all you have to do is do a quick Google search and a wealth of stuff comes up: data sheets, application notes, tutorials, articles and even complete books.

Good point and I still have many of those books, handed down from my father. When I asked him a question I was often handed a book and told to read it.

Ron

 

Hola Reloadron,

Do vessels in high seas stop engines during night time?

It seems that if you are not dummy enough, you would be sufficiently aware of both ends of any pool just by looking at it. The risks, way too evident even for a 10 years kid. In Electronics, for the newcomer (thus a not-informed person), there is no evident deep (or shallow, for the case) end prior delving into the subject.

In a certain way, when I started, as a hobbyist, I decided to learn "everything" so to speak, prior daring to design (build, bah) something. That made my life miserable because I always felt I was not up to the level needed to build anything more complex than a flashlight. I regret I had not chance for formal education to come up to speed much earlier... But that is my problem, I know.

Most of you, professionals of any level, are talking standing on your current knowledge and the experience gained in the way. The majority had formal education what hobbyist (newcomers) most of the time, do not have.

My profession, as far as I know, offer no chances to be a hobbyist on the matter but even then I use to answer any question related to it, no matter how "stupid" it sounds. No, vessels do not stop in night time.

When you learn just a little you then understand there is a long ladder to climb, but not before. And most of the times, when you know what to ask and how to ask it, you do not need to ask anymore.

 

If the student can't touch the bottom at either end, how does he/she know which end is "the deep end"?

Very good point. I assumed they could read but... I will give this considerable thought. I will also send you some snow later this evening.

Ron

 

It seems that if you are not dummy enough, you would be sufficiently aware of both ends of any pool just by looking at it. The risks, way too evident even for a 10 years kid. In Electronics, for the newcomer (thus a not-informed person), there is no evident deep (or shallow, for the case) end prior delving into the subject.

I'm not convinced that is necessarily true in all cases-- or even the majority of cases. I strongly suspect (although I can't cite any data to support my suspicion) that for every "clueless newbie" who shows up here to ask questions displaying near-total ignorance, there are probably several-- or even many-- "clueful newbies" who have sense enough to look things up on Google, read what they find, and learn. They may or may not come here eventually, but when they do they'll ask intelligent questions, usually to fill in some gap in their knowledge.

 

Good point and I still have many of those books, handed down from my father. When I asked him a question I was often handed a book and told to read it.

Same here. Mine also brought home his copies of EE trade mags after he'd read them, like EDN, Design News, Electronics Design, and Electronics Products. I learned a lot from them.