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I should have loved electrical engineering

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Re: I should have loved electrical engineering

#91

Post by choilive »

Eggpants wrote: post #76
dfawcus wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah - there was a massive filtering of the students between the 1st year entry, and the second year at my Uni. Largely down to people unable to handle the (not terribly) complex maths at that stage. I knew a number of folks in the first year who were very good at practical electronics, having come in from a technician side, but simply gave up due to the heavy maths load. It got more complex when doing Control Theory…

I went into EE wanting to learn how to design CPU’s and thought the analog side would be boring. However, control theory turned out to be my favorite class. Learning how negative feedback loops are everywhere was an eye opener. Also learning Laplace transforms was one of my first “holy shit this is freaking clever and cool” moments. Just like how parity bits in data streams can be used to detect AND correct errors.

Control theory was also one of my favorite classes that a low of software people should learn (at least the very basics). So many hand rolled heuristically driven if/else type systems that can simply be replaced more reliably with a PID.

Re: I should have loved electrical engineering

#92

Post by choilive »

markus_zhang wrote: post #39
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.

Fixing consoles is also treating circuits like black boxes :) . just gotta know what the black boxes are

Re: I should have loved electrical engineering

#93

Post by sevensor »

tekla wrote: post #73
sevensor wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My biggest criticism of EE pedagogy is that it tends to proceed from abstractions and then derive the whole world. This makes it a bit of a slog for a lot of students. I’d like to see an application-first approach that builds up principles from observed behavior. Like, measure the slip in an induction motor and then work out what’s going on there, instead of deriving motors from Maxwell’s equations.

Massive waste of time. So much happens in a way that is not intuitive nor easily observable that starting from the math is much better.

So set your sights lower? A lot of BS EEs exit the process understanding neither Maxwell’s equations nor which end of a soldering iron to hold. The degree demonstrates that they are good at abstract symbol manipulation, and that’s not nothing, but it’s not very intellectually fulfilling and it filters out a lot of people who could be good engineers.

Re: I should have loved electrical engineering

#94

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

Eggpants wrote: post #76
dfawcus wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah - there was a massive filtering of the students between the 1st year entry, and the second year at my Uni. Largely down to people unable to handle the (not terribly) complex maths at that stage. I knew a number of folks in the first year who were very good at practical electronics, having come in from a technician side, but simply gave up due to the heavy maths load. It got more complex when doing Control Theory…

I went into EE wanting to learn how to design CPU’s and thought the analog side would be boring. However, control theory turned out to be my favorite class. Learning how negative feedback loops are everywhere was an eye opener. Also learning Laplace transforms was one of my first “holy shit this is freaking clever and cool” moments. Just like how parity bits in data streams can be used to detect AND correct errors.

I never really "got" control theory until about 10 years after graduation.

I was working as an SW Engr and taking a set of courses towards a Mechatronics certificate (my employer did a lot of motion control work) and I had to basically take updated versions of the same classes. The lab instructor was an about-to-retire engineer from Schunk, and he did an amazing job of explaining what the theory meant in terms of real-world behavior. That's when it all finally sunk in and I could look at the math and "see" how a mechanism would respond.

Re: I should have loved electrical engineering

#95

Post by alchemical_piss »

ninetyninenine wrote: post #58

It's hard to put this plainly without being insulting but I have to be blunt. EE is just 100000000000x harder to learn. The distance from theory to application for EE is especially gigantic. Software development for the most part is extremely easy. It's one of the few "engineering" fields where you can go to a bootcamp and learn it in 6 months. You won't see this kind of thing for quantum mechanics or electrical engi…

Agreed, it’s a very hot take on this website, where everyone’s egos have been inflated to near popping, but I’ve long held that most software jobs are pretty easy.

But the cool thing about software is that it has paid so well despite its relative ease, it’s a well paying field that still secures a middle class life that’s resilient to inflation.

Once that’s gone, a whole lot of people are going to find themselves condemned to dropping an economic class or two.

Re: I should have loved electrical engineering

#96

Post by leohart »

Aurornis wrote: post #79
Eextra953 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the drop in tinkering is due to the high skill/cost barrier to entry particularly SMT, and lab equipment. If you want to do anything interesting beyond a breadboard and arduino/rpi you are going to need to invest in a custom pcb and lab equipment. With SMT, I got into EE/HW by taking things apart and studying them, back then (late 90's) most consumer stuff still had a good mix of thru-hole and SMT so tinkerin…

I disagree. It has never been cheaper to get decent equipment. Custom PCBs have been $5/square inch for a set of 3 from OSHPark for many years. You can buy a usable hot air station on Amazon for the price of a DoorDash meal.

Do you have a recommended hot air station for tinkerer use? I am trying to move up from breadboarding into something more field-deployable proof of concept.

Re: I should have loved electrical engineering

#97

Post by zhemao »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #15

TL;DR author discovers there is little overlap between EE and CS. Hardware and software are called different things for a reason? I do agree that tinkering with the hardware always needs to be in-step with the lesson at hand. You can't just state KVL/KCL and move-on, you need to have the student build a circuit and play with it for a day or two.

No? There's plenty of overlap. I studied computer engineering in undergrad, which is similar to the author's original major. There are a lot of subjects that straddle the boundary, like computer architecture, embedded systems, and digital signal processing.

Obviously yes, if you're doing heavy analog/power/RF stuff you're going to be pretty far from software, but EE is a really broad field.

Re: I should have loved electrical engineering

#98

Post by zhemao »

I had a similar starting point to the author but ended up in totally the opposite direction, haha. Took computer engineering in undergrad and did well in both CS and EE courses. My first job was as an SDE at AWS but I hated it. Went back to school for EE, got a PhD, and started working as an ASIC designer, which I'm still doing today.

It's definitely the case that there's a bigger jump from school project to actually useful product for EE than for CS. But now that we have affordable but decently featured FPGA boards, the barrier is much lower than before, at least for digital design.

Re: I should have loved electrical engineering

#99

Post by Kirby64 »

leohart wrote: post #96
Aurornis wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. It has never been cheaper to get decent equipment. Custom PCBs have been $5/square inch for a set of 3 from OSHPark for many years. You can buy a usable hot air station on Amazon for the price of a DoorDash meal.

Do you have a recommended hot air station for tinkerer use? I am trying to move up from breadboarding into something more field-deployable proof of concept.

Look up '959D' as a model. They're serviceable hot air stations made by a bunch of different white label vendors that are usually $40-60 on the likes of Amazon, cheaper elsewhere.

Re: I should have loved electrical engineering

#100

Post by pclmulqdq »

morpheuskafka wrote: post #61
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…

> Plenty of cutting-edge science needs hobbyist-level EE, it's just not work in EE But aren't there a lot of actual hardware products that are "simple circuit blocks connected to a microcontroller"? Like a toaster, shaver, keyboard, etc. If that's not "work in EE" then what is it classified under? It's not CS either.

It would have been better phrased as "research in EE." There's no research involved in building a toaster.

Another commenter pointed this out, but those products take about 1-2 days of engineering time.

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