My self-study plan for electrical engineering • Hacker News Board

Re: My self-study plan for electrical engineering

#91

Post by exmadscientist » Sun, Mar 21, 2021, 5:40 AM UTC

billfruit wrote: post #76

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.

Also perhaps units conventions etc may be different in EE and Physics, like use of Gaussian units in electrodynamics in Physics, and also things like the mysterious 'Z'-transform that seems to pervade much of EE.

Gaussian units seem to be on their way out. I, for one, won't miss them. (Or cgs.)

The Z-transform is much more related to the others than is clear at first glance. This post on transforms [0] from the The n-Category Café is fascinating, and my go-to for understanding what the Laplace transform really is, even if I don't quite grasp many things in the post. (And I also have a math degree! But not a graduate one in active use, as most of the people around there do.)

https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2019/07/what_is_the_lap...

Re: My self-study plan for electrical engineering

#92

Post by ci5er » Sun, Mar 21, 2021, 5:49 AM UTC

dboreham wrote: post #90

ci5er wrote: post #74

Nicely written. For certain. Would it be cruel to suggest that you might want to advance a bit more before weighng in ? I'd say that semiconductor physics, real math, control systems, real mixed signal and a couple of others should get a go ... but my eldest child didn't get much past this, so maybe the state of the art today? Again- I mean no cruelty in my comments, but seems as if modern curricula are not teaching…

> not teaching a person what a person needs to know to go into any related industry job I'm not sure they ever did. They should imho be teaching the ability to learn and adapt to changing and emerging technologies, and to think critically. I'm still using the mathematics I learned in college, to understand things that didn't exist back then such as elliptic curve cryptography.

Well, I don't know how old you were, but ECC has existed in college for a long time - but may not have been so useful to a lot of engineers building machines (for sure), at the time.

Re: My self-study plan for electrical engineering

#93

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Mar 21, 2021, 5:49 AM UTC

someguydave wrote: post #66

apcragg wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a practicing EE / RF comms engineer, I will say that it is very obvious when you're working with someone who thinks that their EE coursework wasn't useful for the real world.

Yeah I have run into plenty of EE's who don't understand how to model a simple filter, for instance.

[deleted]

Re: My self-study plan for electrical engineering

#94

Post by mikewarot » Sun, Mar 21, 2021, 6:05 AM UTC

Radio - Get an RTL-SDR dongle kit, and install GNU radio. Being able to get signals from the real world, and manipulate them via a flowgraph lets you do far more hands on than years of labs used to.

I've implemented all the standard things, AM, FM, SSB radios, etc.. I had a lot of fun figuring out how to decode and display the local VOR beacon near my house.

You can also play with audio frequencies, and your microphone and speakers... it's fairly easy to get an intuitive idea of what a negative frequency really means if you have an IQ channel.

Re: My self-study plan for electrical engineering

#95

Post by ur-whale » Sun, Mar 21, 2021, 6:07 AM UTC

dboreham wrote: post #87

35 years since I graduated. A little surprised to find that many of the books are the same.

Noticeably absent from the curriculum is anything to do with gate-level electronic design, which makes up a vast percentage of the bulk of 2021 electronics.

I sometimes wonder how much of the practical and theoretical know-home related to designing modern cutting-edge silicon is actually buried in the brains of private sector workers and how much of it makes it back to academia.

Re: My self-study plan for electrical engineering

#96

Post by Haarisgrey » Sun, Mar 21, 2021, 6:15 AM UTC

Of course we got people like this!. I smoke and I’ve been a smoker for years. Most of the time I am surrounded by people who do not smoke at all. Doesn’t amaze me. I have some close friends, we hangout together international;y and vacation parties but they both have never smoked weed and I am a regular smoker and this thing doesn’t affect our friendship at all. It’s not about something being legal or illegal. If a thing is facilitating you either way it is totally okay for the other person to use it. I started using it for my chronic pain and eventually ended up like this. https://www.weedmarket420.us/ Being a marijuana enthusiast I keep on researching for good material and here I came across 5 new researches! Have a good day!

Re: My self-study plan for electrical engineering

#97

Post by imranq » Sun, Mar 21, 2021, 6:15 AM UTC

I would spend more time understanding your motivation for brain computer interfaces. It seems more like a research project with some applications to neurodegenerative diseases, but to actually get anything done you'll need to master several fundamental texts which takes most people years.

Spending just a week or two talking to all the experts could save a lot of wasted effort.

Re: My self-study plan for electrical engineering

#98

Post by rxhernandez » Sun, Mar 21, 2021, 6:45 AM UTC

krapht wrote: post #14

exmadscientist wrote: post #8

Why push yourself through a degree-style path? So much of what EEs learn in their coursework is of low utility. (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.) There are two ways to learn an existing technical-ish subject: you can spend a lot of time reading textbooks, then do some projects…

> (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.

Re: My self-study plan for electrical engineering

#99

Post by rramadass » Sun, Mar 21, 2021, 6:57 AM UTC

hellbannedguy wrote: post #83

I would add this cheap book to anyone interested in EE, or fooling around with circuits. The book just basically goes back to Ohm’s law, but I guess there are EE whom graduate, but forget the basics? Electrical Engineering 101: Everything You Should Have Learned in School

I disagree; this book is too shallow and uneven. It is one of the books that i bought when i started on Electrical/Electronics self-study and was disappointed.

Re: My self-study plan for electrical engineering

#100

Post by randomchars » Sun, Mar 21, 2021, 7:00 AM UTC

rasz wrote: post #80

panda88888 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RC filter is like fizzbuzz for EE.

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.