Hi all,

Before my retirement, training technicians was among my duties for a looong long time (over 20 years). I was purposefully snappy against questions, telling them to RTFM, almost always in English language, even though the individual tech did not speak or understand the language. The purpose was to "encourage" them to refer to the manual which would be available long after I was not.

Now I am a completely "new" guy in the field of PIC, particularly in the details of the available development software, and from what I see in the responses of some helpers (guides? instructors? leaders?) that my previous attitude earned me a lot of hard feelings to put it very lightly, from those which I was supposed to be "helping".

I share the comments about today's youth being very lazy to page through a thick manual when it's extremely easy to ask someone to give them a "pill" suitable for their exact problem. I even myself feel tempted to do it that way sometimes, because it looks faster and easier. This is something that we have to accept, because we are not capable of changing it. Up to now, I could manage to raise only my daughter with an inquisitive mind and a researching attitude, that's all. I (unfortunately) understand that I have little chance of influencing others in this matter.

Nevertheless, "banging the idiots on the head" with snappy comments is not the proper way, I now understand looking at this "mirror". The most efficient way would be subtly and gently guiding them to the name of the document and the number of the page they should read, and hope that they will get used to it in time and accept it as the "regular" way of learning.

I am grateful to see that the number of people like my "old" self in this forum is really in the minority and most of the contributors are really trying to help as much as they can.

This message is not related with this thread, but it's perhaps related to all the questions which has drawn at least one snappy response.

Regards,

Engin Tarhan