🙂 fully agreed.
This could have been said by a musician, in fact it has been said by a famous classical musician (sorry, forgot who it was) concerning how to do Mozart right:
"First you have to learn all the stuff, Quintenzirkel, harmony theory, pianistic technique, all the heavy load, and then you have to get rid of it again to access Mozart, to play it right".
Since school i had lenghty discussions with musicians about right performances, and there were objecitvists among them like among engineers, objecting to certain famous musicians performances. Claiming they played it not by the book ()and of course claiming i had no right to judge as i have no musical education) And there were subjectivists adoring Clara Haskil playing Mozart with one of her hands crippled and sometimes maybe making small mistakes now and then but successfully having gotten rid of anything in the way to accessing Mozart. Playing Mozart like a master-degree-skilled child, with the soul of a child.
Or Solomon playing Beethoven maybe not as technically flawless as he was able before his series of small strokes finally paralyzing his hands but doing it idiomatically right, and detailed so, without stepping on any of the countless landmines hidden in Beethoven compositions, delivering a whole, bringing the listener close to Beethoven's divine insanity.
Those musicians do intuititvely right what they do (and not necessarily by the book) and so do gifted engineers, designers. Sometimes the textbook stuff stands in the way of seeing a smart, not-so-orthodox solution.
But: one only can get rid of it after one had had it. One has to pass it, to have it in the repertoire, the textbook stuff can be terribly useful (and a PITA if not at hand), but doing it by the book is not a mental state one has to stay in.
However, text book models are simplified models of reality. How much simplified? that is what we learn by doing it, by experience. And so any objectivist still mentally growing is in permanent danger to become a subjectivist 🙂
Intuition
Thanks, diceman, for coming up with the word on the tip of my tongue.
Pease's writings will teach you how to think intuitively about analog circuits. Something you will not gather at "bootcamp". (Yes, I admit some of you may actually something there, but not much. At least don't count on it.)
The irony is that one of the things that they try to impress upon young minds there is how to think. But most fail miserably at it. One does not need to sit through an entire semester of solid-state physics to get lectured at length as to why the capacitance of a reverse-biased diode changes with voltage. You can figure that out by looking at Cob vs. voltage. You do not have to understand all of the theory to put it to use.
Thanks, diceman, for coming up with the word on the tip of my tongue.
Pease's writings will teach you how to think intuitively about analog circuits. Something you will not gather at "bootcamp". (Yes, I admit some of you may actually something there, but not much. At least don't count on it.)
The irony is that one of the things that they try to impress upon young minds there is how to think. But most fail miserably at it. One does not need to sit through an entire semester of solid-state physics to get lectured at length as to why the capacitance of a reverse-biased diode changes with voltage. You can figure that out by looking at Cob vs. voltage. You do not have to understand all of the theory to put it to use.
Cob
Cob.......Isn't that something you bite corn off of? Before getting too carried away by intuition:
1. You have to know what a reversed biased diode is.
2. You have too know how transistor looks like a reversed biased diode and a forward biased diode.
3. Once you figure out what Cob is and how to find it on a data sheet, what do you do about? Mark Twain once said "Everyone talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it."
4. Once we understand Cob (output capacitance) for a transistor, we investigate Collector Emitter voltage, the effect of choice of load resistance on bandwidth and bias conditions. Should we cascode? Should we buffer with a follower stage? Should we select a different transistor?
Sounds like some of those Electrical Engineering fundamentals could come in handy about now.........
H.H.
Cob.......Isn't that something you bite corn off of? Before getting too carried away by intuition:
1. You have to know what a reversed biased diode is.
2. You have too know how transistor looks like a reversed biased diode and a forward biased diode.
3. Once you figure out what Cob is and how to find it on a data sheet, what do you do about? Mark Twain once said "Everyone talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it."
4. Once we understand Cob (output capacitance) for a transistor, we investigate Collector Emitter voltage, the effect of choice of load resistance on bandwidth and bias conditions. Should we cascode? Should we buffer with a follower stage? Should we select a different transistor?
Sounds like some of those Electrical Engineering fundamentals could come in handy about now.........
H.H.
Fundamentals, yes. Theoretical drivel, no.
Understanding it is one thing. Deriving it is problably an exercise one does not need.
Understanding it is one thing. Deriving it is problably an exercise one does not need.
Jocko:
The way people generally come up with *anything* new at all is NOT by just following directions on how to make a certain type of design, or copying others. It requires understanding really what's going on in these circuits and beyond a basic level thats impossible without the education.
Also, anyone who ever wants to do anything other than build amps (ie, DACS, digital filters, all kinds of things like that) doesn't have a hope in hell without some serious knowledge.
The way people generally come up with *anything* new at all is NOT by just following directions on how to make a certain type of design, or copying others. It requires understanding really what's going on in these circuits and beyond a basic level thats impossible without the education.
Also, anyone who ever wants to do anything other than build amps (ie, DACS, digital filters, all kinds of things like that) doesn't have a hope in hell without some serious knowledge.
Education and amps
It is possible to build a very good amp without an engineering or
physics degree. I good basic understanding of transistors is very helpful though. Lots of bad sounding amps have been designed by EEs. Lots of great sounding amps have been built by non EEs. An interesting example is the trend to designs using no global negative feedback. I wonder if the popularity of this approach might have been brought about by non EE types having difficulty
designing stable negative feedback loops. Interestingly this lead to a critical examination of negative feedback by the academic community. Again I really advise reading the articals by Nelson Pass and Erno Borbely for an excellent overview of amplifier design.
H.H.
It is possible to build a very good amp without an engineering or
physics degree. I good basic understanding of transistors is very helpful though. Lots of bad sounding amps have been designed by EEs. Lots of great sounding amps have been built by non EEs. An interesting example is the trend to designs using no global negative feedback. I wonder if the popularity of this approach might have been brought about by non EE types having difficulty
designing stable negative feedback loops. Interestingly this lead to a critical examination of negative feedback by the academic community. Again I really advise reading the articals by Nelson Pass and Erno Borbely for an excellent overview of amplifier design.
H.H.
We are getting sidetracked here......
You do not need to have gone to engineering school to be able to design stuff.
You do know have to know what you are doing.
I do design "serious stuff", and I can't think of a single thing I learned in "bootcamp" that has ever helped me. Hell, DACs, micros, and stuff like that weren't even invented yet when I was there.
Books.......they are out there.....read them. Afterall, isn't that what you do in college? Who can tell me the last time they used their Gray & Searle?
OTOH, how many engineers say they read their Bob Pease at least once a year to make sure they haven't forgotten anything.
You do not need to have gone to engineering school to be able to design stuff.
You do know have to know what you are doing.
I do design "serious stuff", and I can't think of a single thing I learned in "bootcamp" that has ever helped me. Hell, DACs, micros, and stuff like that weren't even invented yet when I was there.
Books.......they are out there.....read them. Afterall, isn't that what you do in college? Who can tell me the last time they used their Gray & Searle?
OTOH, how many engineers say they read their Bob Pease at least once a year to make sure they haven't forgotten anything.
New Law
If HP, National, Tektronix, Motorola, TI read this thread, they will
be laying off their engineers and be hiring off the streets.
If HP, National, Tektronix, Motorola, TI read this thread, they will
be laying off their engineers and be hiring off the streets.
i really dont want to keep arguing about this but its really irrelevant that your bootcamp didnt teach you anything because im talking about places that aren'y bootcamps. yes, you can design without a phd in EE but there's a lot of stuff you'll never really know......anyway forget it, no need to argue about this here 🙂
Arguing is pointless, but there may be some good discussion here. (but you didn't hear it from me 🙂 )
Well, I think it comes down to who you are, as much as anything else. Some people can pick up a book and absorb and apply what they read. Some people need formal type instruction.
There have been studies done that suggest that people learn better on their own, away from the distraction that occurs at a formal university. I have never done well in formal classroom settings, unless I'm really interested in something.
It may be true that you don't have the same depth of knowledge by learning on your own, compared to someone who is formally educated. But, at the same time many people who attend a university are only good to cram and feed back knowledge shortly after it's presented. They are worthless when it comes down to applying it in any practical sense.
A friend of mine, who is in his mid to late 50's used to give a common knowledge test to the engineering co-ops and trainees that came through our division of a large fortune 500 company. It was unbelievable to think, but many didn't know how many inches in a yard, how to calculate the volume of a cylinder, even simple 5th grade questions like state capitals.These were 4 year students with electrical and mechanical degrees. One woman who thought she was being singled out responded that it really didn't matter what she knew, because she knew how to look it up when it really mattered. So, who was right? My friend says all people my age are examples of our failing education system, and people my age say he is a fossil that has no idea how modern engineering works. Maybe the truth lies somewhere in between, as it probably does in this discussion.
So, my 2 cents worth: It depends on who you are. Some people are driven to a depth of understanding not attainable by those in the most optimal of learning situations, and therefore attain a knowledge that is deeper than most. Others get by and get the degree. A person's potential is dependant on their drive, and as much as I hate to say it, on their God-given intelligence. What you do with what you have been given/shown is up to you. Let the results be the judge.
SteveG
Well, I think it comes down to who you are, as much as anything else. Some people can pick up a book and absorb and apply what they read. Some people need formal type instruction.
There have been studies done that suggest that people learn better on their own, away from the distraction that occurs at a formal university. I have never done well in formal classroom settings, unless I'm really interested in something.
It may be true that you don't have the same depth of knowledge by learning on your own, compared to someone who is formally educated. But, at the same time many people who attend a university are only good to cram and feed back knowledge shortly after it's presented. They are worthless when it comes down to applying it in any practical sense.
A friend of mine, who is in his mid to late 50's used to give a common knowledge test to the engineering co-ops and trainees that came through our division of a large fortune 500 company. It was unbelievable to think, but many didn't know how many inches in a yard, how to calculate the volume of a cylinder, even simple 5th grade questions like state capitals.These were 4 year students with electrical and mechanical degrees. One woman who thought she was being singled out responded that it really didn't matter what she knew, because she knew how to look it up when it really mattered. So, who was right? My friend says all people my age are examples of our failing education system, and people my age say he is a fossil that has no idea how modern engineering works. Maybe the truth lies somewhere in between, as it probably does in this discussion.
So, my 2 cents worth: It depends on who you are. Some people are driven to a depth of understanding not attainable by those in the most optimal of learning situations, and therefore attain a knowledge that is deeper than most. Others get by and get the degree. A person's potential is dependant on their drive, and as much as I hate to say it, on their God-given intelligence. What you do with what you have been given/shown is up to you. Let the results be the judge.
SteveG
........but they're sure as hell not hiring off the street.
Of course you can learn from books, but there are some people who will pickup things that you can't learn from books by listening to and working with world leaders in both digital and analog EE.
Of course you can learn from books, but there are some people who will pickup things that you can't learn from books by listening to and working with world leaders in both digital and analog EE.
Layoffs
Ditto, Jocko! They might as well hire them off the street since they don't teach them anything but systems engineering now. I spent all morning explaining how a diode worked to a guy with a Master's in EE and good grades...... That's OK it's all Computer Aided Design now. ( I wouldn't worry myself Dave. No HAL 9000
has ever made a mistake.) Oh ya..... I worked with a Senior Engineer that made about 100 grand a year with no degree. He couldn't design a raw supply ( Transformer, diode bridge, cap) but loved to tell me how much better with the CAD tools he was than I was! He got laid off 3 months after I did.
H.H.
We design audio equipment the old fasion way, we listen.
Ditto, Jocko! They might as well hire them off the street since they don't teach them anything but systems engineering now. I spent all morning explaining how a diode worked to a guy with a Master's in EE and good grades...... That's OK it's all Computer Aided Design now. ( I wouldn't worry myself Dave. No HAL 9000
has ever made a mistake.) Oh ya..... I worked with a Senior Engineer that made about 100 grand a year with no degree. He couldn't design a raw supply ( Transformer, diode bridge, cap) but loved to tell me how much better with the CAD tools he was than I was! He got laid off 3 months after I did.
H.H.
We design audio equipment the old fasion way, we listen.
Attachments
Harry:
OK, any guy with a masters in EE and good grades who doesn't know how a diode works definitely went to what we all call bootcamps. And obviously one of the worst ones at that.....there is absolutely no way someone from anything but the poorest school could do that. This is more a problem with people putting faith in degrees from no-name institutions.
Oh, and CAD? I've never used it at my school (they never really teach it......you can take graduate classes that will take advantage of some parts of it but not a whole lot.
OK, any guy with a masters in EE and good grades who doesn't know how a diode works definitely went to what we all call bootcamps. And obviously one of the worst ones at that.....there is absolutely no way someone from anything but the poorest school could do that. This is more a problem with people putting faith in degrees from no-name institutions.
Oh, and CAD? I've never used it at my school (they never really teach it......you can take graduate classes that will take advantage of some parts of it but not a whole lot.
masters
The guy went to the University of Texas at Dallas, a school that is a popular recruiting ground for all the major Telecom companies in the area. (Alcatel, Erricsson, Nortel, T.I., ect.) He wasn't an idiot either. He new what a diode was. He didn't know how it acted in the real world (forward voltage drop vrs. current, turn on characteristics, reverse leakage, Schottky, Fast Recovery, High efficiency, ect. Turns out in the real world there is a lot more to a diode than an ideal model.......
CAD? I dare anyone to get a EE without running a Spice model in school. I ran my first one at the University of Arkansas in 1976 with a card deck on an IBM 360. I had to wait two hours to get my printout for each circuit change.(the whole school was sharing two computers) Now you can download Spice from the Web for free and it takes a few seconds to run the simulation. I got an A for using Spice to to prove that a single transistor circuit would not work unless you sorted the transistors for highest Hfe. I seem to remember starting to build my first DIY audio projects about this time........
H.H.
The guy went to the University of Texas at Dallas, a school that is a popular recruiting ground for all the major Telecom companies in the area. (Alcatel, Erricsson, Nortel, T.I., ect.) He wasn't an idiot either. He new what a diode was. He didn't know how it acted in the real world (forward voltage drop vrs. current, turn on characteristics, reverse leakage, Schottky, Fast Recovery, High efficiency, ect. Turns out in the real world there is a lot more to a diode than an ideal model.......
CAD? I dare anyone to get a EE without running a Spice model in school. I ran my first one at the University of Arkansas in 1976 with a card deck on an IBM 360. I had to wait two hours to get my printout for each circuit change.(the whole school was sharing two computers) Now you can download Spice from the Web for free and it takes a few seconds to run the simulation. I got an A for using Spice to to prove that a single transistor circuit would not work unless you sorted the transistors for highest Hfe. I seem to remember starting to build my first DIY audio projects about this time........
H.H.
hang on, he DIDNT know about all those things you put in parentheses (turn on characteristics, reverse leakage etc etc)????
that's absurd, absolutely absurd.
that's absurd, absolutely absurd.
Absurd
It didn't surprise me a bit. They don't go into these things in depth in school. Hell, soft recovery high efficency diodes didn't even exist as far as I know when I was in school. EMI regulation and high frequency switching power supplies have made them pretty generic at this point, so we can even use them in our lowly audio circuits. Synchronous rectification for switchers is even making them and schottkys obsolete for that application. Things change real fast.
H.H.
It didn't surprise me a bit. They don't go into these things in depth in school. Hell, soft recovery high efficency diodes didn't even exist as far as I know when I was in school. EMI regulation and high frequency switching power supplies have made them pretty generic at this point, so we can even use them in our lowly audio circuits. Synchronous rectification for switchers is even making them and schottkys obsolete for that application. Things change real fast.
H.H.
harry: ok, the one point i've been trying to make is that some places DO teach this stuff. it's also considered by a lot of schools something thats easy to learn yourself and that you will learn anyway given time if you dont learn it in school. the point of good engineering schools is to teach you things that are very difficult to learn by yourself.......as people said, anyone can learn by sitting down with a scope and soldering stuff together, then looking at a book, but that only teaches you a certain type of knowledge.........
that was incredibly incoherent i know but the main thing i wanted to make clear through this whole conversation was that although 99.9% of schools in the US are absolutely terrible, going to a good engineering school can be a huge benefit
that was incredibly incoherent i know but the main thing i wanted to make clear through this whole conversation was that although 99.9% of schools in the US are absolutely terrible, going to a good engineering school can be a huge benefit
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