TAB electronics books

Same. I suspect the prof wanted students to think of components as their mathematical models, not using any analogical sense. You can only do that when you have the mathematics to do so.

My high school electronics teacher stayed in his office muttering "I know enough mathematics to be an engineer." ... while we dry-lab'd all our circuits at our benches.

My undergrad prof didn't call out moms specifically, but was very negative towards any sort of mention of hobby/amateur electronics. For him, it was specifically because he thought that the only way to learn the basics was to have the calc & physics underpinning first before even knowing what the components actually do. This was in reference to overhearing a classmate explaining to someone why anyone would care about a capacitor. It was typical undergrad physics material discussing the mathematics behind a capacitor, and this person was mentioning some of the real-world uses like filtering. I clearly remember the prof saying "oh, you're one of those hobbyists" followed by something to the effect of that we were there to learn, not play around.

Basically, just an elitist attitude that the proper way to learn about electronics is to start with the math, and anything else wasn't proper engineering. Which is sad, b/c from what I remember Forrest Mims' books are actually some of the best intro electronics info available, since he doesn't gloss over the complexity but still writes in a way that doesn't require 2 semesters of calculus to understand.

Was short on time yesterday. Will elaborate today.

It's a little different from the abstractions, which are of course, poor but that's less important. There are two Mims camps as a rule. Those who bought the books and perhaps read them and didn't build anything and have fond memories. Then there were those of us who actually build stuff out of the books and experienced the hell that is debugging a poor design with no skills or knowledge. My entire early days of electronics were unfortunately constrained by these books. The only reason the books existed was they looked cheap, cute and simple enough for Radio Shack to sell lots of copies and use that to leverage a hobby industry. They were not quality material and in fact were quite frustrating and destructive. Throw on the dubious quality of some of the components on the market back then (fuck you Radio Shack MPF102) and it was a mess.

Regarding The Art of Electronics, I was given the first edition of this back in the late 1980s and jumped right in. Whilst light on theory intentionally, the book is actually backed up by a lot of professional experience in the industry. There is a student guide/laboratory manual that goes with it that deals with the applied side of it as well so at a basic level they should be considered together. This book turned everything around and led to an EE career.

Roll on a few years from there, I had managed to self teach away most of the nasty, learned algebra at school, jumped into theoretical side via Sedra/Smith. After that everything worked every time. I have a box of 35 year old failures somewhere I will analyse at some point. I did consider opening a YT channel for this but time does not currently allow.

As I have said elsewhere on HN, I can count on a small number of hands how many times I delt with someone who knew how to wirewrap and had decent tools wrapping a bad joint. That stuff went to space, and war, after all. Oh, sure...after 30-40 years those DEC Unibus backplane wraps sometimes got a little flaky depending on mechanical stress (as my VAX attests), but I think we can forgive that. It was the novices with a pencil wrapper and a couple of dozen wraps under their belt that gave it a bad rep.