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Don’t bother with this. It’s half finished SEO fodder, and while most of it is pretty good, it’s probably never going to get done due to competing incentives (i

Don’t bother with this. It’s half finished SEO fodder, and while most of it is pretty good, it’s probably never going to get done due to competing incentives (i.e. running a business) on the owners’ time. Spend $125 on Horowitz and Hill’s The Art of Electronics, 3rd Edition. It’s the last electronics text you’ll ever need.

Arcanum-XIII 3y ago
I have it and it's not helping me a lot as a beginner. Maybe there should be something between the "paint by the number" and "get a master in electronic" levels.
- FL410 3y ago
  I'll admit I haven't read the full thing, but I have and like Practical Electronics for Inventors, Fourth Edition
  - i_am_a_peasant 3y ago
    I second this, I have both this and art of electronics and they truly complete one another
    - moffkalast 3y ago
      Do you guys read the whole thing from start to finish or just look up things you want to understand more from time to time? It's like the thickness of LOTR, so that would take extraordinary patience.
      - cushychicken 3y ago
        LOTR wishes it was the density of AoE. I use AoE as a reference, but I’ve read full chapters from time to time when I’ve worked on relevant projects. I’ve never done an end to end read. Maybe I will when I retire lol. I want to set aside time to read chapter 5 at some point. The precision electronics chapter is supposed to be bomb. Culminates in a design review of the autoranging circuit of one of the common handheld DMMs.
- cptaj 3y ago
  That's youtube. I shudder to think what will happen if youtube closes or radically changes operation. It will be even worse than burning the library of alexandria
- cushychicken 3y ago
  The suggestion for Practical Electronics for Inventors is a good one. You’re right: AoE is a rough sled as a brand new electronics learner.
- octagons 3y ago
  I recommend looking at “Make: Electronics” by Charles Platt. I read Electronics for Inventors, and have even pushed myself through respectable chunks of AoE, but Platt’s book really helped to drive home some concepts and spans a mere 350 pages.
- obscurette 3y ago
  AoE, Machinery's Handbook etc are wonderful references, not for learning. “Make: Electronics” by Charles Platt and "Practical Electronics for Inventors" are both good practical recommendations. What to prefer really depends on your background. I'd add "Electronic Devices" by Thomas L. Floyd if you prefer more academic/systematic approach.
blagie 3y ago
Art of Electronics is popular but kind of horrible. 1) At the level you can understand it, you don't need it. There are better, more in-depth, shorter books. 1) At the level you can't, it's incomprehensible. You'll run into a brick wall. It's hard to recommend something without knowing background, but to do electronics well, you need to know basic linear algebra and differential equations, and understand (at least on a cursory level) the Laplace domain. You also need to be comfortable with poles, zeros, and rational functions. That's a high bar. The most common mistake I see is trying to get further without being over that bar. Below that, you have popular books, many cartoonish, which explain what voltage and current are and the basic components. That's enough to do some basic Arduino projects and robotics, but not really get what's going on more deeply. Above that bar, there are much more in-depth and theoretical approaches one is ready for the Art of Electronics. Horowitz and Hill tries to compress that stuff down, toss in a bunch of oddball topics, and it doesn't really work.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- AdamH12113 3y ago
  I wouldn't call it "horrible" -- many of the explanations are good and there's a lot of practical advice. But it is worth noting that AoE is an electronics book, not a circuit analysis textbook or a signals and systems textbook. The brief review in the first chapter is just that -- a review. If you want to develop a deeper intuition about how voltages and currents behave in electrical circuits, you'll have to look elsewhere.
  - blagie 3y ago
    The problem is that learning one hinges on the other, and you can't understand the practical at the depth AoE goes into without first understanding the theory. Someone in the thread mentioned it was designed for physicists. It might be okay there. That's a kind of unique background where someone might understand the theory without the application. However, most of the time I've seen it used, it's a recipe for frustration.
- 3y ago
hwillis 3y ago
With AoE, the machinists handbook, and some textbooks on medicine/chemistry/agriculture/geology you could rebuild society on a different planet. It's one of those counterpoints to the "nobody knows how a pencil is made" thing. It's probably only good for a beginner with like 180 IQ. You can cover weeks of material in 5 pages, and it's well over 1000 pages total. I'm an electrical engineer and I own a dozen or so textbooks for referencing. I don't even use AoE for referencing because it's so dense.
- barelyauser 3y ago
  You missed the point of the "nobody knows how a pencil is made". It is not about gathering all the knowledge in one place, but how knowing just enough enables us to go much further.
  - hwillis 3y ago
    I'm not really trying to make a big statement, since the general gist of 'I, Pencil'[1] is obviously indisputable. But the point is actually about self-organization rather than atomization (ie maximum specialization). It doesn't make particularly strong statements about whether breaking knowledge down into parts is intrinsically better, just that a self-organizing system (specifically a profit incentive) will cause actors to move towards whatever level of specialization is most effective. There are known caveats to the general idea (Nash equilibrium, Hotellings's law) but I'm just trying to point out that even despite the general correctness, there are people who are very heavily vertically integrated. And you would in fact expect those people to exist, because local minima are a fact of reality and you need people to understand larger parts in order to see past local phenomena. 'Ars Longa, Vita Brevis'[2] is a well-liked post that is in line with what you're describing. It's a bit funny, because the weak form argument (specialization is generally good) is totally obvious and there's basically no way to attack it. Specialization is the thing that has made society possible, and if anything it's more effective now than it was at the invention of simple tools. But the strong form requires some pretty specific assumptions. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I,_Pencil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I,_Pencil [2] https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/11/09/ars-longa-vita-brevis/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/11/09/ars-longa-vita-brevis/
allenrb 3y ago
I have TAoE (but probably 2nd Ed, as I’ve had it for some years) and it is both educational and very dense. That said, I bought “Learning the Art of Electronics: A Hands-On Lab Course” and really like it. There’s a good bit of practical, accessible knowledge there. Imho worth checking out for anyone who likes the idea of TAoE but finds it just a bit deep. FWIW, my formal education is CS with a dose of digital electronics thrown in. For anything analog, I’ll try and find existing circuits close to what I need.

Arcanum-XIII 3y ago

I have it and it's not helping me a lot as a beginner. Maybe there should be something between the "paint by the number" and "get a master in electronic" levels.

FL410 3y ago
I'll admit I haven't read the full thing, but I have and like Practical Electronics for Inventors, Fourth Edition
- i_am_a_peasant 3y ago
  I second this, I have both this and art of electronics and they truly complete one another
  - moffkalast 3y ago
    Do you guys read the whole thing from start to finish or just look up things you want to understand more from time to time? It's like the thickness of LOTR, so that would take extraordinary patience.
    - cushychicken 3y ago
      LOTR wishes it was the density of AoE. I use AoE as a reference, but I’ve read full chapters from time to time when I’ve worked on relevant projects. I’ve never done an end to end read. Maybe I will when I retire lol. I want to set aside time to read chapter 5 at some point. The precision electronics chapter is supposed to be bomb. Culminates in a design review of the autoranging circuit of one of the common handheld DMMs.
cptaj 3y ago
That's youtube. I shudder to think what will happen if youtube closes or radically changes operation. It will be even worse than burning the library of alexandria
cushychicken 3y ago
The suggestion for Practical Electronics for Inventors is a good one. You’re right: AoE is a rough sled as a brand new electronics learner.
octagons 3y ago
I recommend looking at “Make: Electronics” by Charles Platt. I read Electronics for Inventors, and have even pushed myself through respectable chunks of AoE, but Platt’s book really helped to drive home some concepts and spans a mere 350 pages.
obscurette 3y ago
AoE, Machinery's Handbook etc are wonderful references, not for learning. “Make: Electronics” by Charles Platt and "Practical Electronics for Inventors" are both good practical recommendations. What to prefer really depends on your background. I'd add "Electronic Devices" by Thomas L. Floyd if you prefer more academic/systematic approach.

blagie 3y ago

Art of Electronics is popular but kind of horrible. 1) At the level you can understand it, you don't need it. There are better, more in-depth, shorter books. 1) At the level you can't, it's incomprehensible. You'll run into a brick wall. It's hard to recommend something without knowing background, but to do electronics well, you need to know basic linear algebra and differential equations, and understand (at least on a cursory level) the Laplace domain. You also need to be comfortable with poles, zeros, and rational functions. That's a high bar. The most common mistake I see is trying to get further without being over that bar. Below that, you have popular books, many cartoonish, which explain what voltage and current are and the basic components. That's enough to do some basic Arduino projects and robotics, but not really get what's going on more deeply. Above that bar, there are much more in-depth and theoretical approaches one is ready for the Art of Electronics. Horowitz and Hill tries to compress that stuff down, toss in a bunch of oddball topics, and it doesn't really work.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
AdamH12113 3y ago
I wouldn't call it "horrible" -- many of the explanations are good and there's a lot of practical advice. But it is worth noting that AoE is an electronics book, not a circuit analysis textbook or a signals and systems textbook. The brief review in the first chapter is just that -- a review. If you want to develop a deeper intuition about how voltages and currents behave in electrical circuits, you'll have to look elsewhere.
- blagie 3y ago
  The problem is that learning one hinges on the other, and you can't understand the practical at the depth AoE goes into without first understanding the theory. Someone in the thread mentioned it was designed for physicists. It might be okay there. That's a kind of unique background where someone might understand the theory without the application. However, most of the time I've seen it used, it's a recipe for frustration.
3y ago

hwillis 3y ago

With AoE, the machinists handbook, and some textbooks on medicine/chemistry/agriculture/geology you could rebuild society on a different planet. It's one of those counterpoints to the "nobody knows how a pencil is made" thing. It's probably only good for a beginner with like 180 IQ. You can cover weeks of material in 5 pages, and it's well over 1000 pages total. I'm an electrical engineer and I own a dozen or so textbooks for referencing. I don't even use AoE for referencing because it's so dense.

barelyauser 3y ago
You missed the point of the "nobody knows how a pencil is made". It is not about gathering all the knowledge in one place, but how knowing just enough enables us to go much further.
- hwillis 3y ago
  I'm not really trying to make a big statement, since the general gist of 'I, Pencil'[1] is obviously indisputable. But the point is actually about self-organization rather than atomization (ie maximum specialization). It doesn't make particularly strong statements about whether breaking knowledge down into parts is intrinsically better, just that a self-organizing system (specifically a profit incentive) will cause actors to move towards whatever level of specialization is most effective. There are known caveats to the general idea (Nash equilibrium, Hotellings's law) but I'm just trying to point out that even despite the general correctness, there are people who are very heavily vertically integrated. And you would in fact expect those people to exist, because local minima are a fact of reality and you need people to understand larger parts in order to see past local phenomena. 'Ars Longa, Vita Brevis'[2] is a well-liked post that is in line with what you're describing. It's a bit funny, because the weak form argument (specialization is generally good) is totally obvious and there's basically no way to attack it. Specialization is the thing that has made society possible, and if anything it's more effective now than it was at the invention of simple tools. But the strong form requires some pretty specific assumptions. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I,_Pencil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I,_Pencil [2] https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/11/09/ars-longa-vita-brevis/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/11/09/ars-longa-vita-brevis/

allenrb 3y ago

I have TAoE (but probably 2nd Ed, as I’ve had it for some years) and it is both educational and very dense. That said, I bought “Learning the Art of Electronics: A Hands-On Lab Course” and really like it. There’s a good bit of practical, accessible knowledge there. Imho worth checking out for anyone who likes the idea of TAoE but finds it just a bit deep. FWIW, my formal education is CS with a dose of digital electronics thrown in. For anything analog, I’ll try and find existing circuits close to what I need.