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Comment by jotm | Hacker News Reader

Not helping is the lack of good educational material - unlike software, there aren't all that many books around dealing with hardware, and more importantly, there aren't any people teaching others how to do stuff (via writing, videos, etc.). The grizzled veterans do their thing without bothering to share the knowledge...

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There are plenty of excellent good books, but the entry barrier is somewhat higher. You simply need at least a basic understanding of calculus if you are to actually understand any of the processes that occur in semiconductors, and some basic knowledge of electromagnetism is required to grok issues like signal integrity.

Sauce: I'm an EE.

Yes, but then there is also a ton of best practices, what works and what doesn't work, basic circuit design principles etc. which to my knowledge isn't really condensed in any one book, but rather in lots of trade articles etc.

(This assumes chip design work (ASIC's etc), but general hardware design (uC work) the same principle applies, and then you don't need the calculus and physics knowledge really).

Sauce: I'm an EE too... :D

> Yes, but then there is also a ton of best practices, what works and what doesn't work, basic circuit design principles etc. which to my knowledge isn't really condensed in any one book, but rather in lots of trade articles etc.

That's also true about software. Once you get past the usual "comment your code carefully and make sure you're not redundant in it", 99% of the stuff that is useful in practice is stuff you derive from practice.

I'm learning how to test right now. You can read three books about testing, but you won't really get what they're saying until you actually TDD an app. Domain concepts are really malleable (read, hard to nail down) and deadlines are really hard, it would not surprise me if only 1-3% or so of people that work with software seriously actually test their code. I count myself lucky to be able to throw enough work hours in to figure it out.

Software is full of thin ice where you can walk out on it, jump around, then, mistakenly thinking it's frozen over, drive your truck on, only to have it fall through. It looks easy. But there's a reason 90% of the Rails apps I've looked at had no tests.

Speaking of EE educational material, for the basics this MIT OCW course[0] is really good. There's also an MITx version[1] that's super interactive and even features Gerald Sussman of SICP fame.

[0] - http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-comput...

[1] - https://6002x.mitx.mit.edu/

Get a degree in EE?

Or physics. I find it's quite often the knowledge of the underlying principles that spurs my problems solving and creativity when working with electronics, rather than the (rightly) engineered outlook you get coming out of EE.

I've seen some physicists put together mind blowing electrical systems.

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