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I should have loved electrical engineering

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Re: I should have loved electrical engineering

#31

Post by kalinkochnev »

ryandrake wrote: post #10

The EE component of my CSE degree felt like a math degree in disguise. Calculus, linear algebra, differential equations, discrete mathematics... It was a long time ago but I remember it as three years of math prerequisites and Maxwell’s equations and then finally we could learn what a MOSFET is. Absolutely terrible. I just want to learn how circuits work and how to build a guitar amp! But noooooo I need to learn how…

I agree that is excessive. But I would hate equally, if not more, learning with magic rules delivered by the professor in the sky. The info doesn't stick for me unless I understand the intuition behind the reasoning.

Re: I should have loved electrical engineering

#32

Post by pclmulqdq »

amelius wrote: post #29
nudgeee wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By fab you mean lab, then agree. Fabs are specific to the manufacturing of integrated circuits. EE encompasses more than just manufacturing of ICs, for example research and applications in radio propagation and EM/wireless, signal integrity, antenna design, coexistence/desense, advanced power electronics, control systems, simulation/solvers, etc.

This is true, although for wireless applications you can follow the recommendations of the IC vendor and the remainder of the work is RF-engineering, not research. That's why I said fab, not lab. But yes, you are right to a great extent. The main point is that the hard EE work can be prohibitively expensive for individuals and smaller companies.

I think you're oversimplifying this. Lots of RF research is done with a DAC, an ADC, an FPGA, and a frontend made of discretes (sometimes also with off-the-shelf boxes connected with SMA connectors). A lot of power electronics research is done with microcontrollers and discrete parts. Digital circuits research often stops on an FPGA or in a simulator.

You can do a lot of actual original work without a fab.

Re: I should have loved electrical engineering

#33

Post by stephen_g »

carlmr wrote: post #27
pclmulqdq wrote: post #11

EE encompasses a lot of "engineering that takes hard math" at a professional and research level (similar to "hard CS," just different fields of math), so it is very hard to do as an undergrad, when your background in complex analysis and E&M is weak. Early classes on circuits in EE will usually take shortcuts using known circuit structures and simplified models. The abstraction underneath the field of analog circuits…

>Early classes on circuits in EE will usually take shortcuts using known circuit structures and simplified models. Might just be me, but I found it all clicked when we started learning the fundamentals underneath these abstractions. For me it was harder in the first classes because it's about memorizing poorly understood concepts, my brain prefers logically deriving complex concepts as a learning method.

Yeah, this kind of idea is why I’m dead against using things like the hydraulic analogy in early EE for anyone who is ever going to want to do more than the ‘hook some things up to an Arduino’ (or probably ESP32 these days) kind of level electronics.

The gaps between the analogy and the real world actually make it harder to understand the fundamentals and just confuse people when you get to a deeper level understanding. It requires more unlearning than is worth it for the slight benefit of making the concepts slightly more intuitive to understand at the beginning.

Re: I should have loved electrical engineering

#34

Post by mynameajeff »

I did a lot of CS out of passion as a child but leading up to high school I was around such uniquely skilled group of friends in the field that I felt that I should pursue EE as I felt so out-skilled as a programmer. It only took me a single year of university to realize that EE was NOT my calling. I've never had so much completely fail to instinctively "click" in my brain compared to my peers. Meanwhile I was practically teaching the CS courses to my peers. I found that computer engineering was the perfect intersection for me because it let me explore so much more hardware and low level stuff without requiring analog dark magic that for whatever reason even the simplest of principles my mind couldn't grasp. I still really wish I could have gone on to make super clean headphone amps and all that but it turns out there really are just some things you can be "naturally" good and bad at, and for me it clean code not clean circuits.

edit: +1 on the "I just started bruteforcing" part of getting frustrated with everything. It was not a good way of learning but even after switching programs I found myself preferring to just bruteforce problems I had lost hope in thinking through to completion without running into a mistake that'd require me start back over from the top when I have 200 of the same type of problem to do after. So much mental effort would be wasted trying to "get" things I just wasn't getting that I started to getting more satisfaction mentally from just managing to get the solution without doing the effort of doing it "right" (ignoring that my methods of bruteforcing would probably still take far more time and energy, it was at least something that didn't hurt me spiritually on every failure).

Re: I should have loved electrical engineering

#35

Post by junon »

stephen_g wrote: post #33
carlmr wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Early classes on circuits in EE will usually take shortcuts using known circuit structures and simplified models. Might just be me, but I found it all clicked when we started learning the fundamentals underneath these abstractions. For me it was harder in the first classes because it's about memorizing poorly understood concepts, my brain prefers logically deriving complex concepts as a learning method.

Yeah, this kind of idea is why I’m dead against using things like the hydraulic analogy in early EE for anyone who is ever going to want to do more than the ‘hook some things up to an Arduino’ (or probably ESP32 these days) kind of level electronics. The gaps between the analogy and the real world actually make it harder to understand the fundamentals and just confuse people when you get to a deeper level understandi…

Once I ditched the hydraulic analogy and really tried to internalize charge, current, voltage, etc. is when I finally started to understand why the hydraulic analogy "works" but only for people who already understand electricity.

Electricity behaves in many ways just like water (just at a significantly faster time scale) but I don't think it actually helped me learn how it all worked to start with.

Re: I should have loved electrical engineering

#36

Post by mynameajeff »

kalinkochnev wrote: post #31
ryandrake wrote: post #10

The EE component of my CSE degree felt like a math degree in disguise. Calculus, linear algebra, differential equations, discrete mathematics... It was a long time ago but I remember it as three years of math prerequisites and Maxwell’s equations and then finally we could learn what a MOSFET is. Absolutely terrible. I just want to learn how circuits work and how to build a guitar amp! But noooooo I need to learn how…

I agree that is excessive. But I would hate equally, if not more, learning with magic rules delivered by the professor in the sky. The info doesn't stick for me unless I understand the intuition behind the reasoning.

Yeah I had a magic-rules-first style experience in my EE program and it really didn't work for me at all. The nebulous reasoning made it for me where I just really couldn't internalize the pretty basic "rules" because I couldn't help but mess myself up overthinking the more abstract modes of conceptualizing everything which just confused me more. I'm thankful because it gave me the opportunity to quickly learn that I was a lot better at code than circuits, I probably would've been screwed if it took me that long to get to that point in my educations, but I will say the magic rules just did not work for me personally as a way to understand things. I'm sure others would do a lot better at just jumping right in though.

Re: I should have loved electrical engineering

#37

Post by stn8188 »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #13

More people should get into EE and see it all the way through. And, rather than getting a masters degree or PhD, go straight into industry. Why? Because just beyond what you learn in your BSEE degree lies one of the most fascinating topics ever: Signal integrity. I understand why a lot of people bail out of EE, and why a lot go to web dev specifically. EE relies so heavily on simple calculus that there's a distinct m…

You exactly describe my journey! After undergrad, I went right to industry doing hardware design. Given a complex PCB, I was confronted with this field of signal integrity and I fell in love with it. My undergrad didn't explicitly require EM courses, but I learned on the job (lots of reading plus guidance from some experienced RF engineers). Eventually I went back for my master's, and it was so nice knowing exactly which niche I wanted to focus on (and finally get a ton of EM fundamentals under my belt). It truly feels like EE is an infinite field with no limit to the possible type of work...

Re: I should have loved electrical engineering

#38

Post by marcosdumay »

stephen_g wrote: post #33
carlmr wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Early classes on circuits in EE will usually take shortcuts using known circuit structures and simplified models. Might just be me, but I found it all clicked when we started learning the fundamentals underneath these abstractions. For me it was harder in the first classes because it's about memorizing poorly understood concepts, my brain prefers logically deriving complex concepts as a learning method.

Yeah, this kind of idea is why I’m dead against using things like the hydraulic analogy in early EE for anyone who is ever going to want to do more than the ‘hook some things up to an Arduino’ (or probably ESP32 these days) kind of level electronics. The gaps between the analogy and the real world actually make it harder to understand the fundamentals and just confuse people when you get to a deeper level understandi…

Hum... The hydraulic analogy is for school kids to learn what electricity is. If you are creating circuits to hook into an arduino, you should have moved from it already.

Re: I should have loved electrical engineering

#39

Post by markus_zhang »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #11

EE encompasses a lot of "engineering that takes hard math" at a professional and research level (similar to "hard CS," just different fields of math), so it is very hard to do as an undergrad, when your background in complex analysis and E&M is weak. Early classes on circuits in EE will usually take shortcuts using known circuit structures and simplified models. The abstraction underneath the field of analog circuits…

Interesting. My approach to hobbyist EE (actually embedded) is:

1. Learn soldering

2. Treat circuits like black boxes. If I need X amount of Y, e.g. I need a circuit to smooth the voltage, I pick one black box with adequate attributes.

However this is pretty introductory and I have no idea how to learn to fix old consoles. Sometimes it’s just a broken capacitor but I first need to figure out which part is broken.

Re: I should have loved electrical engineering

#40

Post by not_that_d »

marcosdumay wrote: post #38
stephen_g wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this kind of idea is why I’m dead against using things like the hydraulic analogy in early EE for anyone who is ever going to want to do more than the ‘hook some things up to an Arduino’ (or probably ESP32 these days) kind of level electronics. The gaps between the analogy and the real world actually make it harder to understand the fundamentals and just confuse people when you get to a deeper level understandi…

Hum... The hydraulic analogy is for school kids to learn what electricity is. If you are creating circuits to hook into an arduino, you should have moved from it already.

I feel insulted.
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