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My self-study plan for electrical engineering

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Re: My self-study plan for electrical engineering

#131

Post by throwaway348422 »

crispyambulance wrote: post #115
analog31 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a physicist too, and learned electronics on my own. I don't have an engineering job title, but have done fairly extensive design work. In my workplace, I'm the go-to person for anything analog and quantitative, such as figuring out a noise budget for a measurement system, as well as for figuring out how to prove that it actually works. Horowitz and Hill had a chapter entitled "digital meets analog," and there sho…

> a lot of people with engineering job titles don't really do engineering: They can be quite busy and productive, and rewarded, for basically arranging things, fitting things together, troubleshooting, dealing with vendors, and so forth. In my work, the title "manufacturing engineer" title goes to people that work all day (and at a hard pace) doing nothing other than working in the PLM system, orchestrating ECO burea…

> The sad thing is, there's an increasing population of these types, along with product/project managers and supply-chain specialists, while at the same time a decrease in engineers and techs.

This makes total sense to me. The bulk of time I’ve spent on many projects goes into supply chain management and factory coordination. I can easily see how the work of one engineer can keep 10 people like this busy full time.

Re: My self-study plan for electrical engineering

#132

Post by jmchuster »

randomchars wrote: post #100
rasz wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of those is a basic building block used in pretty much everything, the other is software bullshit.

Looping through a list of items, and doing different operations based on their value is an extremely common occurrence, and you’d hard pressed to find a codebase that doesn’t use that pattern somewhere.

Welp, this is why interview fizzbuzz exists, because some people think of it as "software bullshit" instead of the simplest possible program you can imagine that should come out as fast as you can type it.

Re: My self-study plan for electrical engineering

#133

Post by analog31 »

posterboy wrote: post #127
analog31 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something I keep thinking about is that 100 years ago we had a huge cadre of workers called "clerks," whose job was basically to gather, organize, and transfer information. You'd think those people would be replaced by computers, but there's always a bit of complexity in each transaction that needs the human touch: Does this ECO make sense, for instance. Outside of engineering, a lot of people with "manager" titles a…

they are titled engineer if that's what their diploma says, which is indeed not that rare, and maybe paires well with software engineers fresh out of college who fail fizzbuzz (as mentioned before in this thread), precisely because so much of software engineering is glueing packages together. I'm not saying that's a bad development. It's just what it is, probably follows a smooth bell curve distribution of expertiese…

I think it's an inevitable outgrowth of complexity. If the number of pieces grows by O(n), then interactions between pieces grows by O(n^2). It doesn't take much complexity before gluing pieces together becomes the dominant activity in an enterprise.

Re: My self-study plan for electrical engineering

#134

Post by Balgair »

bucket2015 wrote: post #49
stochastician wrote: post #43

I used to build BMI systems in graduate school, from the lowest level (mixed-signal analog design for 70 uV extracelleular signals) to DSP (128 DSPs doing real time analysis) to the network (built my own ethernet MAC, foolishly!) to all the vis and RT-linux-based analysis. I left the area and switched into ML in grad school, but if I had to do it all over again there's one thing I think is missing: Optics. Optics opt…

OP here - Thanks! I'll put back the optics courses I deleted then

Bit late to the party, but this person is very much correct. I also do BMI work and optics is undoubtedly the future for neuroscience. The optics book you want to get is Hecht:

https://www.amazon.com/Optics-5th-Eugene-Hecht/dp/0133977226

That's a good intro into real optics.

It's much more than the optics chapter you'll get in a physics textbook. It goes over the classical ray optics in good detail, does a great job with traditional matrices and that formulation of optics (the one that the design programs like Zemax use), goes well into the real meat-n-potatoes of wave optics (including birefringence, a huge part of biological optics), gives you a good accounting of how lenses and other optical devices are actually Fourier transformers, and also dives into the more esoteric optical devices (a must for practical neuro-optics).

It's an upper-division/graduate level book, fyi. So I'd back-load it in your study course. Though in terms of neuro-optics it's more of a keyhole book.

If you are particularly interested and really want to know what's actually going on with EM, then you need to go through Jackson:

https://www.amazon.com/Classical-Electrodynamics-Third-David...

This is the book on EM, but is very much physics graduate student level. And honestly, I don't think you's need it for BMI stuff. But if you don't go through it, you'll just be trusting other people when they say your ideas won't work and they can't really explain it to you. Just going through Jackson is a bit of a hazing experience and will earn respect.

Re: My self-study plan for electrical engineering

#135

Post by throwaway348422 »

bsder wrote: post #75
WillSlim95 wrote: post #13

I have some recommendations for you as an EE graduate, you can club Digital Circuits and Systems, Embedded Systems and Digital Hardware with one book in one continuous course with the book Digital Design and Computer Architecture by Harris and Harris (A RISC V Edition will release soon in 2-3 months, buy that one) For Electronic circuits choose Microelectronics by Behzad Razavi. Instead of Purcell go for "Engineering…

The one problem I see is "The Art of Electronics". I Horowitz and Hill is a LOUSY textbook. And, personally, I find its usefulness as a cookbook overrated. Going through the Forrest Mims notebooks/cookbooks/etc. for a solution to your problem is generally a way better idea than Horowitz and Hill. The Mims stuff does a really good job of pointing out the pitfalls you're likely to hit as well as the basic pedagogy.

Totally agree it’s a lousy textbook, but it’s not a cookbook either. It’s more like the Cliff’s Notes version of many many many application notes. One needs to be somewhat experienced to take advantage of it. For example, you might be decent at amplifiers but now you need to do a low noise measurement. Read the low noise chapter on AoA first. Now you know the lay of the land and you can understand the vocabulary of the area and navigate the actual datasheets and application notes.

Re: My self-study plan for electrical engineering

#137

Post by imtringued »

WillSlim95 wrote: post #47
madengr wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it to broad to be accomplished? It seems to cover your typical BSEE, and you need an exposure to all of it. Razavis RFIC is a good one too, but that’s really getting too specialized. Pozar is good for undergrad microwave.

As someone who survied a BSEE, the range is too huge. I work with digital design as my day job, I only intuitively use EE101, digital logic and computer architecture and occasionally analog when dealing with post silicon issues. The OP wants to study EE because he has a specific goal. My suggestion was that instead of trying to study everything EE focus only on those subjects that are relevant. For example: If I was…

I did a basic project and I don't see how you can do robotics without analog systems unless you don't intend to build custom actuators and just buy very expensive off the shelf parts. The digital portion is absolutely trivial.

Re: My self-study plan for electrical engineering

#138

Post by achillesheels »

rxhernandez wrote: post #98
krapht wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (I'm a physicist who transitioned to working as an EE. I have never had a single EE course, and yet I find myself with no obvious deficits compared to my colleagues who have.) Not to dunk on the rest of your reply, which I agree with, but there is a humongous overlap between your typical undergraduate physics and electrical engineering degree, and I think you're able to be successful because they're so similar. Aca…

I have undergrad degrees in EE and physics. There is barely any similarities besides a class or two in electrodynamics. I even went a step further with how involved with physics I was during the EE degree and specialized in RF; hardly any of that was covered in my physics degree.

I think it’s eye opening that physicists cannot explain how a computer operates physically lol

Re: My self-study plan for electrical engineering

#139

Post by WillSlim95 »

imtringued wrote: post #137
WillSlim95 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who survied a BSEE, the range is too huge. I work with digital design as my day job, I only intuitively use EE101, digital logic and computer architecture and occasionally analog when dealing with post silicon issues. The OP wants to study EE because he has a specific goal. My suggestion was that instead of trying to study everything EE focus only on those subjects that are relevant. For example: If I was…

I did a basic project and I don't see how you can do robotics without analog systems unless you don't intend to build custom actuators and just buy very expensive off the shelf parts. The digital portion is absolutely trivial.

Analog systems and Analog Integrated Circuits, Analog Systems deals with using Analog chips, analog integrated circuits chips deals with designing such chips, a robotics engineers needs the first one not the latter. And the first one requires EE101 knowledge and signals and systems knowledge for filters etc which the OP is already covering in other courses

Re: My self-study plan for electrical engineering

#140

Post by aj7 »

krapht wrote: post #65
aj7 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. I disagree, and I’m a Physics SB and PhD (lasers). EE is a discipline unto itself. A stack of physicstextbooks and coursework is useless when you need to build a circuit that does what you need. Indeed, even writing down the desired circuit specs in a reasonably professional manner has zero overlap with physics.

If it's just circuit design, the difference between an EE and a physicist is 6-9 credit hours of courses. You will both share all the necessary prerequisites in mathematics (mostly Fourier analysis, linear algebra, basic statistics, and differential equations) and electromagnetics. New graduates in EE also can't do the things you listed :)

6-9 credit course of courses and you’re a circuit designer? You are dreaming. Which capacitors are used for what function? What kind of trouble can you get into if your comparator is too fast? Do they tell you that a 7800 series regulator needs a load? Going to school is good. But if the alternative is 6-9 course hours, I’ll get further with scope, meter, soldering iron, app notes, and LTSpice in the same time than that student. And I assure you, from the bottom of my heart, as a near-expert in both, that the Fourier analysis in quantum mechanics, solid state physics, optics, etc. bears little resemblance to that used in signals and systems and DSP. LITTLE. RESEMBLANCE.
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