OK, is it just me and old age?
I was educated (no, honestly) long before Mr Berners-Lee invented his wonderful tool. There was no such thing as a forum like this to get answers, information etc. You either got it by going to and listening in class, or, shock horror, reading books. And of course you had to work out which books to read. Usually there would be standard recommended publications for each class, plus some additional reading. One thing that definitely didn't work was going to the univeristy library, striding up to the librarians' desk and demanding "Analogue or digital, which is which, and be quick about it, I need it for tomorrow!"
I may have an antiquated attitude but I get really worried thinking of the next generation of 'engineers' whose approach to life is shown by the emergency posts we get on threads like this. "Let's not do any preparation or planning, let's just ignore the problem till the last day and then we can always say we got no help from others." No wonder I get so despondent during interviews when I'm trying to hire someone. It's not the lack of knowledge that worries me (God knows, there's a squillion issues I'm ignorant about) it's the methods used to remedy this. We seem to have lost a lot of initiative somewhere along the way. There's more information available at my desktop today than I had throughout my entire educational life, and yet the ability to search, select, filter, sort, extrapolate does not get nurtured or rewarded. Let's just ask someone instead.
OK, yet another horse ridden in to the ground. I feel a lot better even if no one reads this.
Ken