Ask HN: An alternative to Horowitz and Hill? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: An alternative to Horowitz and Hill?

6 pointsjgrahamc6 comments

Can anyone recommend an alternative text to Horowitz and Hill? Although I think it's a great reference text and is full of useful circuits, there are times when I wish H & H were more pedagogic. Is there a good 'learning' book that would complement H & H?

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You do know that there is a companion hands-on lab book for AofE, right? http://www.amazon.com/Art-Electronics-Student-Manual-Exercis...

The ARRL handbook is also a very practical intro text, but quite broad.

[edit] Oh, another decent book that's aimed at technician level students: Electronic Principles by Malvino. I've got an older edition from my high school days, and it's a real easy read with lots of explanation of transistor circuits. http://www.amazon.com/Electronic-Principles-Albert-Malvino/d...

I've just pulled out my H&H and had a look. It's terse, but its explanations are pretty complete. Looking at one circuit and trying to work out why it works I had to back-trcak through several earlier sections, but it seemed pretty clear.

I'm not sure what else you'd be looking for. Pedagogically if you start from the front and work carefully through it then I think it would be hard to beat it.

I can't help but feel that anything more targetted at teaching would be 5 times the size, or cover one fifth the ground. Can you be more specific about how you feel it falls short?

I guess my problem is that I ended up feeling it's too terse. I read chunks of it years ago when I studied electronics and I've be working through it from the beginning as a way to occupy my bus commute (along with 8,000 other things :-) and there are times when it's a bit infuriating because it's so terse.

I think it's a "Read like math" not a "Read like prose" situation. The best learning mantra is "See one, Do one, Teach one" and I think they've conflated the first two parts of that. They give you the information, but force you to work through it to achieve understanding.

Beyond that attempt at helping you to find the right attitude with which to approach the book, I no further advice.

I'd be interested in hearing why you're catching up on electronics of this type. Maybe we really should have a London meetup.

I'd be interested in hearing why you're catching up on electronics of this type.

Mostly because I like making physical things and electronics is something that I know some things about.

Sparkfun just started selling a book called "Electrical Engineering 101". I've never read it, but I imagine it's pretty good.

Do you have access to a good electronics lab? A lab + H&H might be sufficient. I learned 80% of my electronics this way, but the last 20% was learned from old crusty EEs. If you don't have access to a lab, you can build your own (oscilloscope, function generator, power supply) for a few hundred dollars. I don't know where you can find old crusty EEs.

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