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Comment by srvmshr | Hacker News Reader

Normally I avoid sounding critical but since you vociferously defend the article's merit, here is what I honestly feel: As people deeply involved or passionate about tech, we hope HN to be a place where

* Read something we know from a different perspective (a.k.a the hacker way)

* Read something deeper which explains the (usually simpler) stuff in due course (i.e. deepdive)

I get it, you love the article and you want it on HN. But it does nothing more than regurgitating what we learned in university already. And the treatment of the topic is pedestrian (Please see why I critiqued it in terms of absence F/R bias & charge flow etc. Just having a sketch of the BJTs & FETs is extremely low bar)

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You don't have the right to gatekeep on HN. There are plenty of people here that aren't Electrical engineers and the article will be great for them. I certainly enjoyed it. The thing I love about HN is exposure to various types of articles, even things not even remotely related to tech, and certainly YOU should not be some sort of purveyor about what belongs on HN or not.

> You don't have the right to gatekeep on HN.

Absolutely not. But I have a right to point out where an article does a lot of handwaving & is plainly shallow.

> There are plenty of people here that aren't Electrical engineers and the article will be great for them.

Neither am I. Thats the best thing about being on HN. People are very passionate about the wave of information & its quality. Also if the SNR of articles weren't high (& it was just another Medium-types) you & I won't be discussing its merits here. Thankfully HN posts manage to attract the curious minds.

> YOU should not be some sort of purveyor about what belongs on HN or not.

I am not, by any means. @dang does that - and very effectively. My job is to express views constructively & debate with facts, without resorting to emotional barrage. You shouldn't either.

>> You don't have the right to gatekeep on HN. >Absolutely not.

Then I suggest you stop. If you don't like an article, then you can skip it. There's nothing worse than people not liking an article and then decrying about it on the comments when all they need to do is move onto the next article.

"And who should you be to command me that, Mi'lord?"

You are guilty of the very things you _presume_ I am doing: Gatekeeping. I have as much entitlement to expressing myself, as you, on this site if I am doing a constructive discussion. You don't like my critique of the post? Then move on - just like you suggest. Not my suggestion but yours

Trolling me is such a wasteful spending of your time. Better would be to mind your own business instead of telling me what topics I am allowed to post or not.

Telling someone to stop gatekeeping is not gatekeeping.

I didn't learn about this in university and was interested by the article. Maybe consider that not everyone took electric engineering and move on with your day?

Absolutely. But would you like to base your understanding on something well written, intuitively illustrated (not necessarily math or physics heavy) OR something which is a refined copypasta from any garden variety electronic textbook?

If I could show you where to find a better place to learn, would you still consider me to "mind my own business"

I am not HN's knight crusader. But I would be happy if people got a better appreciation of things others love. And that needs some constructive critique at times. At HN discussions I try to do that whenever I can.

Could you please share the source you mentioned above. Although a computer scientist by profession, I had to "just accept" lots of basic electrical engineer concepts in my undergrad days just because there was no one available that I could ask.

For a very quick reference, if you don't know anything (Edit: A grandpa level introduction)

https://www.digikey.com/en/articles/transistor-basics

And then,

https://youtu.be/qhJaq3kl6Dc https://youtu.be/AnEVas6cl6Y

Someone even mentioned Ben Eater's videos on SC & PN Diodes & P-N-P/N-P-N transistors. I liked those too when I was learning. Finally the first 10-15 pages in Chapter 1 of Milman & Halkias (PDFs widely circulating) are such a clear read, if something still doesn't click.

For the deep dive details I mentioned in parent post, follow 6.004 Computation Structures' first few lectures. Nand2Tetris lectures also cover how circuits are built from these basic units to make functional units of computer (Bonus: they used to have a simulation software with the book which was neat).

This will build a conceptual model of whats going on in these tiny semiconductor bits - unlike other places which throw in a bunch of facts & expect you to build on top of them

See also https://nandgame.com -- it's not nearly as comprehensive as the nand2tetris simulator, but it's a lot of fun to work through.

I think the Digikey page is a far worse introduction than the article. It explains what transistors are, but not at all how they work. It doesn't mention what N and P type silicon are, no mention of depletion zone, there are tables filled with PNs before we even get to the word "electron", and the history is fascinating but not particularly illustrative or helpful for how transistors actually work. I think they're intended for different audiences.

I think the article is an excellent introduction to the subject. Maybe the videos explain things better, but I didn't watch them, sorry. I'd much prefer to read a 5m article than 2hrs of video, and I think that's pretty common here. I personally think this fits great on HN.

Edit: Second video was very nice; it's short and sweet and covers the same material as the article. I still prefer the article, but some may prefer the different format.

> I think the Digikey page is a far worse introduction than the article.

I started with a disclaimer: If you know nothing - absolute zero. If this was the first time you heard about it. And it does the thing its intended to do i.e. tell a concise history and introducing some of the jargons

To each his own. I think the OP article is pretty poorly written & handwavy. My complaint of not showing charge flow or polarities still holds.

Completely understood, but still completely disagree. My point is that I feel the DigiKey page is not a good introduction if you're starting from scratch. It barely introduces and doesn't explain any of the jargon. It spends less than 2 paragraphs to cover the material from the article, and includes the same plumbing valve diagram. It doesn't cover what a semiconductor is or what makes them useful. It misses all the information about how/why transistors work and jumps straight to how to design around them.

In other words, the DigiKey page fails to answer the question: How do transistors work, anyway?

> In other words, the DigiKey page fails to answer the question: How do transistors work, anyway?

No, it is to first familiarize What is a transistor anyway?.

If I had to teach Complex Analysis, I would start with a calculus refresher. Or if I had to teach Deep learning, I would probably first explain what's a neural network. My recommendation followed a structure. You could even swap out Digikey product description pages for Wikipedia, I couldn't care any less if it just has to introduce what not how. But when it comes to teaching "how the stuff works", anything less than showing biases, polarities & charge flow is a handwave. I am not making arguments for the sake of arguments - if anyone thinks they got it without touching those, they are tricking themselves in.

That's not the point of this thread though, is it? It asks and answers a very different question. I do not think the history or specs are at all helpful in understanding what makes transistors tick.

"How do tower cranes work?"

"They can carry 20 tons and have a travel of 50 meters and were invented in 1950."

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