On 2009-06-02, FreeRTOS.org <[email protected]> wrote:
> "Tim Wescott" <[email protected]> wrote
>
>> Getting the heck out of engineering school while he's still young!
>>
>> For some reason, this year I'm getting mail directly from the
>> "help me I have a month to get my senior project done" crowd.
>> I always start by pointing them to their prof/teaching
>> assistant/tutor/whatever, but it's hard to decide just how
>> much help to give these guys (none is too little IMHO,
>
> That really depends on how the question is asked. If its an
> "I'm an embedded systems master and have an emergency, I need
> to implement USB. Now I see USB but have doubt. How I
> implement USB?" Then 'none' is definitely not too little.

I sometimes get those sorts of e-mails (almost always from one
of a small handful of Asian countries). The "student"
apparently has absolutely no technical knowlege/skills, and
always demands "please send me source codes" or requests
step-by-step instructions on how to design something. There's
obviously no hope for a poor kid who's managed to make it
through 3+ years of engineering school without learning much of
anything. They appear unable to even use Google, which raises
the question of how do they find the e-mail addresses of people
to whom they send questions? Sadly, I've learned to ignore
those e-mails.

> If its an "I'm trying to use USB for the first time. I
> started off reading XYZ book, and most of it made sense.
> However, now I come to implement it it stops working after 5
> minutes. I've tried A, B and C to debug the problem, but am
> having no luck. Can you suggest the next steps I should take"
> - then I will take the time to try and give an answer.

Yup, "real" questions (even rather confused ones) on specific
topics are always welcome -- though more so on newsgroups and
mailing lists than via private e-mail. I usually try to point
them towards an appropriate forum and then answer the question
there (if I can).

--
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at with many advanced fun
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