[HN Gopher] The Art of Electronics (2015)
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       The Art of Electronics (2015)
        
       Author : teleforce
       Score  : 368 points
       Date   : 2023-12-23 21:23 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (artofelectronics.net)
 (TXT) w3m dump (artofelectronics.net)
        
       | iamcreasy wrote:
       | Meta: I hope in the near future every book will come with its own
       | tuned LLM that can answer questions specific about a particular
       | section/problem of the book. Answer of the model should account
       | for prior asked questions, and preferred learning method - just
       | like having access an instructor or TA when enrolled in a course.
        
         | ikari_pl wrote:
         | it's called the author /jk
        
         | LordShredda wrote:
         | Like an online forum?
        
         | mhh__ wrote:
         | ChatGPT was honestly already this for a sufficiently popular
         | book/topic but they've managed to lobotomize it as of recently
         | so it takes a lot more coaxing to actually get to the point.
        
           | iamcreasy wrote:
           | I was thinking multi-modal, and feedbacks that are very
           | specific. For example, building circuits from components and
           | having the model tell you what you did wrong and suggest
           | improvements.
        
         | regularfry wrote:
         | This is already doable with a PDF, RAG, and (optionally) a
         | local LLM. Might just give that a go, actually.
        
           | geepytee wrote:
           | Please do it!
        
             | whartung wrote:
             | Please explain how to do it!
        
       | progbits wrote:
       | I've read the second edition together with the student manual
       | (https://learningtheartofelectronics.com/) which has additional
       | explanations for some tricky concepts plus extra exercises.
       | 
       | I can really recommend it as a starting point from no/minimal
       | knowledge to having a good overview of the key concepts.
       | 
       | It doesn't cover (at least the 2nd ed didn't) fancy digital stuff
       | (modern microcontrollers, USB, FPGAs, etc) but there are great
       | free online resources for that.
        
         | mafuyu wrote:
         | Years ago, I had the lovely opportunity to take the course
         | associated with the student manual at Harvard Extension, taught
         | by the author, Tom Hayes. I was a little high school brat, so
         | Tom probably does not have fond memories of me, but I loved
         | that course, and it set me on the path to becoming an embedded
         | engineer. If you're in the Boston area, consider taking the
         | course via Harvard Extension!
        
           | iseanstevens wrote:
           | Yes 100% agree! If I remember, there were two courses, one
           | analog and one digital. Maybe it was one for both but in any
           | case well worth it!
        
       | cushychicken wrote:
       | Best electronics textbook ever written, without exception.
       | 
       | Highly recommend buying the paper edition.
        
       | nappy-doo wrote:
       | This book was pivotal for me.
       | 
       | In grad school, my advisor recommended this book, saying, "it
       | will be right up your alley." I bought the second edition, and it
       | was. It is truly a graduate level course in circuit design. I
       | started reading this book (2nd edition) front-to-back, and when I
       | finished it, I started again. It helped me innumerable times when
       | I quit grad school and entered industry.
       | 
       | When the third edition came out, I was at Google in Cambridge,
       | and Horowitz came to talk. I had bought a counterfeit copy from
       | Amazon (by accident), and while he didn't sign it then, he did
       | sign it later (when I got a real copy).
       | 
       | Personally, I think it's worth owning both the second and third
       | editions of this book. It is truly one of the best books about
       | electrical engineering out there.
        
         | dekhn wrote:
         | The Horowitz talk at Google is excellent. He's been working on
         | radio hardware and SETI for a long time...
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sImBlq542TQ
        
         | wildzzz wrote:
         | 2nd edition is the best one. Mine is falling apart at the spine
         | but I love it
        
           | lagrange77 wrote:
           | Why (better than the most recent 3rd)?
        
             | GeorgeTirebiter wrote:
             | Yes, the 2nd edition (silver cover) is the best. The 'meat'
             | in the 2nd edition, at least it seemed to me more practical
             | stuff. The 'bad circuits' alone is awesome.
             | 
             | OTOH, the "X Chapters" of the 3rd edition is one of those
             | analog-guru secret handshake books where The Masters take
             | the Apprentice deep into the bowels of kick-butt analog
             | engineering. Where simplification are eschewed for the Real
             | Answers. https://x.artofelectronics.net/
        
               | kragen wrote:
               | thanks for the tips! i had assumed the 3rd edition was
               | better at least in the eyes of the authors
        
               | CamperBob2 wrote:
               | The 3rd edition _is_ better. It 's not even close. I have
               | no idea where these posters are coming from.
        
         | Waterluvian wrote:
         | I'm curious about the counterfeit thing. Did he identify that
         | fact somehow and decline to sign it? Was there some sort of
         | authenticity check built into the books?
        
           | kadoban wrote:
           | Amazon sells a bunch of counterfeit books. They're usually
           | trivial to recognize by the shitty paper and printing. May
           | not be obvious to many buyers, but the author of the book
           | would typically be extremely familiar with what the official
           | prints look and feel like.
        
           | justin66 wrote:
           | https://artofelectronics.net/the-book/counterfeit-editions/
        
           | zerr wrote:
           | As the author claims on his website, if the price is
           | affordable then it is counterfeit. I hope the author
           | understands that such affordable "editions" make the book
           | accessible and popular outside the First World.
        
             | justin66 wrote:
             | Why lie? The author wrote nothing of the sort.
        
               | zerr wrote:
               | _Counterfeit Warning: December, 2015 -- buyers have
               | reported poor quality copies (confirmed as counterfeit)
               | being sold online at prices too low to be creditable.
               | ..._
        
             | squarefoot wrote:
             | I'm not sure about the 3rd Ed, but the 2nd Ed had a much
             | cheaper edition in a red soft cover and slightly smaller
             | size, presumably cheaper recycled paper and no bells and
             | whistles. It was distributed in India and developing
             | countries and by all appearances it was totally legit, also
             | accompanied by a label forbidding the sale in "western"
             | world, where presumably they wanted to adjust prices to the
             | higher income. Of course it was just a matter of time
             | before it would land on Ebay sellers pages and elsewhere.
             | There is where I got mine; items photos however showed the
             | original so I was buying in good faith, although I should
             | have recalled that old saying that if something seems too
             | good to be true (had a very low price) it usually is. From
             | what I can recall from my copy, there were no errors or
             | omissions compared to the "official" one.
        
       | zuhsetaqi wrote:
       | Is there a German version of this?
        
         | samstave wrote:
         | The German is on page 9.
        
           | the__alchemist wrote:
           | "This page intentionally left blank" ?
        
       | adrian_mrd wrote:
       | "Yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man."
       | https://artofelectronics.net/lebowski/
        
       | butterNaN wrote:
       | A gem of a book. Also check out "Bad Circuits":
       | https://artofelectronics.net/bad-circuits/
        
         | stoneman24 wrote:
         | I liked the book but I would like a lot more detail on why the
         | bad circuits are bad. Some are obvious but I thought a few were
         | quite difficult to understand the issue.
         | 
         | I can appreciate the point of view that self discovery of the
         | answer is an important path to learning, but you never know if
         | you are learning the correct lesson. I fortunately had a
         | understanding chief engineer who helped guide me in my early
         | career before I moved to software.
        
         | Physkal wrote:
         | Nice find. What would happen to the 1st circuit, isn't it still
         | a parallel circuit?
        
           | ramenbytes wrote:
           | Assuming you mean the one labeled "voltage divider", the
           | problem is that it doesn't actually divide voltage because
           | the input and output are switched. The unloaded output
           | voltage is the same as the input voltage.
        
             | gnunez wrote:
             | Thanks for your helpful comment! I was also struggling with
             | the bad circuits voltage divider.
        
       | nonrandomstring wrote:
       | This was my bible as a teenager.
       | 
       | I just pulled it down from the shelf to comment, and literally a
       | bunch of wires and solder blobs fell out on my desk.
       | 
       | Imho what sets it apart is chapter 10 (Minicomputers) which gives
       | you enough to understand and build a simple microprocessor board,
       | and chapter 12 (Construction Techniques) that sets you up to
       | build things properly. Without this I wouldn't have progressed to
       | Alan Clements' "Microprocessor Systems Design" and got my first
       | 68000 design working.
       | 
       | What a wonderful gift to the world. thanks mssrs. Horowitz and
       | Hill.
        
         | projectileboy wrote:
         | I took a class where we used Learning the Art of Electronics
         | (with AoE as a reference), and that book was also excellent.
         | Class was taught by a former student of Horowitz and Hill, and
         | one week the OG did the guest lecture! Unforgettable.
        
           | pge wrote:
           | I had the cool experience of taking that class from Prof.
           | Horowitz himself. Not only was the class great, but there
           | were lots of stories around the department of him solving
           | electronics problems for other professors' experiments (my
           | favorite was probably one where a team flew him out to CERN
           | in Switzerland, expecting the problem to take a few days to
           | solve. On the way in from the airport, Horowitz asked them to
           | stop at the lab and show him what was going on. They said
           | there was plenty of time and they would get started the next
           | morning. Horowitz insisted, and they finally relented. They
           | stopped at the lab and showed him the experimental setup and
           | described what wasn't working. He grabbed a wire, soldered it
           | in, problem was fixed, and he enjoyed a couple of days of
           | vacation in Switzerland.)
        
           | willis936 wrote:
           | I went through every book store in Cambridge this past Fall
           | and couldn't find it. I ended up having to order it from
           | Cambridge University Press (located in the other Cambridge).
           | When I looked through Harvard's course catalog for upcoming
           | semesters it didn't look like AoE was part of the curriculum
           | of Harvard's PHYS 123 anymore. It seems like such a shame. If
           | I'm wrong someone please correct me.
        
             | projectileboy wrote:
             | The digital half of class is available via extension (which
             | is how I did it) although it moves at half speed. And for
             | some reason the analog portion hasn't been offered for a
             | couple of years.
        
         | begueradj wrote:
         | Indeed, I just checked it online and it is definitely a very
         | informative book.
        
         | davrosthedalek wrote:
         | For me, it's probably the best physics book ever written.
         | Something you can actually read from cover to cover.
        
       | fisherwithac wrote:
       | Just picked up a copy of this, and have had the hands-on course
       | book on my shelf for a little while now.
       | 
       | Really started to start digging into the former! Any tips for
       | getting through such a massive tome, or is it really something
       | you can just run through front to back?
       | 
       | And for the hands-on lab course book, are the parts lists
       | provided still the best way to get the components, or have there
       | been better ways since its publication? Some of the prices of the
       | tools are pretty daunting.
        
         | ramenbytes wrote:
         | If you can find a ham radio fest or swap meet near you, it's
         | possible to find a lot of different components and equipment
         | cheap, though sometimes in less than ideal condition. Look for
         | surplus departments at local colleges, labs, companies, etc.
         | too. Find out where e-waste goes, and whether you can salvage
         | from it before it gets hauled away. Lots of stuff likely gets
         | thrown out that either still works, can be fixed, or can be
         | used for parts. Downside is you have to plan projects around
         | what you found instead of just buying parts after picking a
         | project.
        
         | atribecalledqst wrote:
         | Non-EE here, but I went through a bit of the lab course as a
         | hobbyist.
         | 
         | Unfortunately a lot of the parts on the lab course's list are
         | end of life now, and it's not always clear what you can
         | substitute them with. There aren't always replacement parts
         | with the exact same specs on digikey. I did source a couple
         | parts through eBay.
         | 
         | Additionally, there are parts that aren't in the BOM that are
         | used in the lab course. An early one has you doing a test
         | against a black box with _something_ inside it, and the book
         | only tells you later what was supposed to be inside it. I think
         | there 's a basic control theory chapter at some point, and
         | there are parts in that chapter that weren't in the BOM.
         | 
         | Ultimately, I got frustrated with the book continuing to ask me
         | to use stuff I didn't know I was supposed to have, and gave up.
         | It got annoying having to get partially through a chapter,
         | order something, wait for it to arrive, then continue. Maybe I
         | would have stuck with it if I'd checked up-front what I was
         | expected to have for all the chapters, and got EVERYTHING in
         | advance. (but again I think it's going to get harder and harder
         | to actually buy what's in the BOM as time goes on)
        
       | spiritplumber wrote:
       | The sacred Jedi texts!
        
         | spiritplumber wrote:
         | This was the one non-religious thing I was allowed to read
         | during my fundie upbringing period. It kept me arguably sane
         | (I'm an EE now). Biking to the one reachable Radio Shack to get
         | parts and taking apart toys. Good times.
        
           | allenrb wrote:
           | Holy crap, this is maybe the scariest thing I've read in a
           | week. You must have known the book really, really well. Glad
           | you had an escape!
        
       | uxp8u61q wrote:
       | (2015) I guess. Or maybe (1980)...
        
       | vichle wrote:
       | Is this a good book for beginners? What other books are good for
       | electronics beginners? Preferably cheaper than this... :)
        
         | comboy wrote:
         | No, I don't recommend it if you are starting out. Unfortunately
         | I don't have a good recommendation, but when starting out
         | modern electronics is not unlike lego building. There's more
         | protocols than analog signals.
         | 
         | If you stay in electronics you'll end up with this book sooner
         | or later though.
        
           | sitkack wrote:
           | https://old.reddit.com/r/AskElectronics/wiki/education
           | 
           | I am a huge fan of the Forrest Mims books and "Practical
           | Electronics for Inventors".
           | 
           | AoE is great, but not a beginners book. More important than
           | any book is building and understanding circuits.
        
         | tmalsburg2 wrote:
         | It's good for beginners (also a great reference). However,
         | stuff gets serious pretty fast, and the reader is expected to
         | put in serious time and effort.
        
         | nhatcher wrote:
         | "Practical electronics for inventors" is what you are looking
         | for. I have both books and I am a physicist. It's not that TAOE
         | is not for beginners, it could be if you really want to put on
         | the effort and are decided to go deep.
        
           | ansc wrote:
           | I just really, really wish there was a student companion
           | book. Maybe I should pay someone to help me with exercise
           | questions. Electronics is hard!
        
         | Nahtnah wrote:
         | I've been burning alot of time learning electronics. This book
         | isnt too bad for beginners, but I get way more understanding
         | out of Behrad Razavi's stuff, he has lectures on youtube as
         | well as a book which has way more worked examples. OTOH this
         | book introduces more intricate concepts much more early which
         | can be good for motivation if you dont let yourself get stuck
         | on totally understanding them. For example he goes through a
         | BPT schmitt trigger before he even shows the small signal model
         | for BPTs.
         | 
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQDfVJzEymI
        
         | _whiteCaps_ wrote:
         | Bebop to the Boolean Boogie
        
         | doubloon wrote:
         | honestly in the post-internet age i would just get on Adafruit,
         | they have so many tutorials and projects that are perfect for a
         | beginner.
         | 
         | as far as a book, i do agree with @nhatcher , i loved Practical
         | Electronics for Inventors but that was before the internet
         | really took over.
        
           | vichle wrote:
           | Do they have stuff that doesn't rely on microcontrollers? I'm
           | a software engineer since 10 years, I don't want to
           | copy/paste some poorly written C code, I want to solder stuff
           | together :)
        
         | RossBencina wrote:
         | After Dick Smith's fun way books as an early teenager AoE was
         | my first "real" electronics book. It was certainly helpful for
         | practical advice, but I did not find its presentation of
         | circuit theory at all clear (the hand-wavy analogy about
         | transistor man comes to mind). At the time I had a music degree
         | and very little undergraduate mathematics and only high-school
         | physics.
         | 
         | More recently I've been dabbling with electronics again.
         | Someone recommended Malvino's "Electronic Principles" (I bought
         | the 5th Edition second hand), which I found much clearer for
         | circuit theory than AoE. Sedra and Smith will probably be my
         | next purchase but I doubt it should be your first.
         | 
         | Also, "beginner" could mean a lot of different things. And
         | perhaps more important than where you're at, where do you want
         | to get to? There's a world of difference between (1) soldering
         | together someone else's design, (2) being able to understand
         | why someone else's design works, (3) being able to piece
         | something together from common sub-circuits, (4) produce your
         | own design from scratch. And all of these will vary depending
         | on the circuit type: analog/digital/RF etc.
        
         | analog31 wrote:
         | Reading some of the other comments, and my own experience, it
         | might be a good book for someone who has _already_ spent some
         | time playing with circuits.
         | 
         | But that's not necessarily an unreasonable hurdle. After all,
         | electronics is about something that happens physically, and
         | maybe getting some tactile experience gets the right brain
         | cells working to be receptive to the theory. Or maybe it's just
         | that the enjoyment of the physical stuff supplies the
         | motivation to learn the textbook stuff.
         | 
         | I might think along similar lines if someone asked for a good
         | textbook to learn how to play the cello.
         | 
         | When I took electronics in college, from 1st edition AoE, I had
         | already been tinkering with circuits for a few years. And
         | playing the cello. ;-)
        
       | belter wrote:
       | Title should include 2015.
       | 
       | Great work but be sure to check the extensive errata:
       | https://artofelectronics.net/errata/
        
         | doubleg72 wrote:
         | Damn, thanks for pointing that out. That's way more than an
         | acceptable number of errors for a book like this, imo.
        
           | mat_epice wrote:
           | 105 errata (pretty small ones) in a 1000-page book. For
           | highly technical work, I'd say that's not too bad. Looking at
           | the errata for Vol I of TAOCP, there's a lot more for a much
           | shorter work (600 pages).
        
           | kragen wrote:
           | books that have less errors per page generally do not contain
           | factual information
           | 
           | of course many factual books have less _reported_ errors per
           | page, but that 's not at all the same thing
        
       | ruslan wrote:
       | I suggest ARRL Handbook. It covers everything, from atom
       | structure to FPGA programming, through antenna design,
       | modulation/demodulation priciples and digital signal processing.
       | The 2023rd edition counts six volumes.
       | 
       | http://arrl.org/arrl-handbook-2023
        
       | tshirttime wrote:
       | Dense, wordy, incomprehensible. Phys123 alum here.
        
         | contrarian1234 wrote:
         | Yeah, I have no idea what's going on in the comment section.
         | The book is incredibly inaccessible and at least 9 out of 10
         | students aren't able to read through it
         | 
         | I feel it's only praised bc it's comprehensive and historically
         | important
         | 
         | It's a horrible way to learn electronics
        
           | thrtythreeforty wrote:
           | This book is an _excellent_ discussion of electronics _once
           | you have a working knowledge_ of basic circuits. The fact
           | that they touch on so much in the book makes it useful as a
           | "Wikipedia" starting point.
           | 
           | I agree that you should not learn from this book from zero.
           | The first few chapters attempt to be an intro but it's not
           | intended to be a gentle introduction.
        
             | scarecrowbob wrote:
             | This year I started picking up on fixing analog electronics
             | as an extension of my stage hand/ audio engineering/ etc
             | work. It's fun and feels nice when I can actually fix
             | something, plus it's a cash business.
             | 
             | For instance, on my own I was able to identify a bad opamp
             | on the in input section of a mixer and rework it (after
             | replacing a bunch of electrolytics and a couple smd
             | transistors, cause I am a novice at this kind of work).
             | Still, I'm not totally a stranger to electronics.
             | 
             | I started in on that book- I kind of agree with the
             | preceding comments.
             | 
             | I plan to come back to it, but I have been watching a lot
             | of youtube, and that has felt a lot more helpful in a lot
             | of ways. I mostly am interested in learning to reason about
             | what is happening in analog circuits so I can eventually
             | clone some instruments and signal processing- maybe I am
             | not the audience for the book.
             | 
             | Like Aaron Lanterman's lectures at Georgia Tech are feeling
             | a whole lot more useful to my interests (granted, I am
             | mostly trying to understand analog electronics because that
             | is what folks bring me that need to be fixed).
             | 
             | https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOunECWxELQSbOv3ekzu
             | w...
             | 
             | Similarly, following Moritz Klein's discussions has been
             | quite helpful... the whole "here is what we're going to
             | build" and then following through with things has felt very
             | siilar to Ben Eater's series on microprocessors.
             | 
             | Still, the chummy ivy-leage tone of TAE wasn't super duper
             | fun for me. I will probably keep returning to it until I
             | can get through it quickly, but for my purposes (and I
             | suspect a lot of folks who aren't on an academic path) it's
             | not maybe the quickest, strongest path to a lot of ends.
        
               | tubetime wrote:
               | a more useful book for audio electronics is _Handbook for
               | Sound Engineers_ by Ballou. there are detailed
               | discussions of common preamp circuits, equalizers, and
               | that sort of thing.
        
           | willis936 wrote:
           | I find the style a bit rambly and even though it's long it
           | doesn't spend too much time on most topics. It really shines
           | when you're a practicing engineer 5+ years out of school and
           | want something to explain how to whip up the circuit that you
           | know you've learned exists in the past.
           | 
           | It especially shines if you need the first principles of
           | precision amplification.
        
           | kragen wrote:
           | it's neither comprehensive nor, as far as i know,
           | historically important, but i've sure learned a lot about
           | electronics from it
           | 
           | i certainly haven't read through it like a novel, though!
           | it's more like, read a few pages, draw a few schematics, run
           | a few simulations, write a few pages of notes, repeat.
           | sometimes the pages are pages i've read previously. plausibly
           | i'll never finish the book, and that's fine with me
           | 
           | i find it both more accessible and more reliable than
           | commonly suggested alternatives like sedra & smith; what
           | alternative would you recommend?
        
         | tmalsburg2 wrote:
         | How can it be dense and wordy at the same time? One is the
         | opposite of the other.
        
           | vojvod wrote:
           | Terse and wordy would be opposites. Dense means thick with
           | verbiage like a forest thick with foliage.
        
       | annoyingnoob wrote:
       | I had the second edition as a college text book in the early 90s.
        
       | the__alchemist wrote:
       | Great reference!
       | 
       | I tried to read it through straight, but got pretty lost
       | somewhere in the transistor section.
       | 
       | The bad news: I still suck at electronics.
       | 
       | The good news: I have this book on hand as a reference.
       | 
       | For better, or for worse: You can get quite far these days being
       | an IC baby. Connect pin A to pin B by apeing data sheet reference
       | diagrams. Electronics-by-numbers, perhaps. So, for better or for
       | worse, electronics fundamentals is only a hard-requirement if
       | you're the one designing the ICs. (Even with RF, there are
       | modules, and IC filters) You can likely think of several
       | programming analogies.
        
         | phero_cnstrcts wrote:
         | So this is overkill if I'm only hacking around with sensors and
         | iot devices?
        
           | the__alchemist wrote:
           | Probably. I think it's always nice to have an understanding
           | of what's going on behind the scenes; this book more
           | describes the circuits that make up the sensor and iot
           | devices, for example.
           | 
           | You can make practical devices by learning an EDA tool like
           | KiCad, get familiar with how to choose parts, and get a feel
           | for how to quickly/effectively extract the info you need from
           | datasheets for various part classes.
           | 
           | If you are looking to design those parts, you need the skills
           | in this book.
        
       | liendolucas wrote:
       | I'm actually not surprised to see the counterfeit warning in the
       | site.
       | 
       | Last week I've ordered a book from Amazon Italy (A Little Java, A
       | Few Patterns) only to receive what I do consider a very low
       | quality copy of the book and somehow different edition despite
       | having both the original and this "copy" same ISBNs:
       | https://www.amazon.it/Little-Java-Few-Patterns/dp/0262561158 and
       | here's the cover of the original one:
       | https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262561150/a-little-java-a-few-p...
       | Not only covers are different (the title in the copy is actually
       | shifted to the rightmost part just as seen in Amazon which
       | immediately makes you think about a counterfeit copy) but the
       | quality of the paper, quality of the cover (both front and back
       | cover bend) and print are different. It feels like the book was
       | printed by a copy center.
       | 
       | Taking a more detailed look at the back it turns out that these
       | alternate versions are printed by Amazon in Italy (despite the
       | fun fact that the very first page states that indeed the copy I
       | have was printed and bound in the USA).
       | 
       | So be _very_ careful to purchase books from Amazon, you can get
       | surprises like these. I used to buy from book depository and as
       | it was indeed another business from Amazon I thought that they
       | would still offer quality books behind scenes, but it seems to be
       | room for Amazon to now also get involved in the business of
       | printing low quality books.
       | 
       | While I was confirmed that indeed the copy I received is not a
       | counterfeit I find it very dodgy for Amazon to do this without at
       | least explicitly mention it in the site.
        
       | snvzz wrote:
       | I have a shady, p2p-sourced PDF, but will definitely get the
       | actual hard cover once 4th edition hits.
       | 
       | It is good.
        
       | bhb916 wrote:
       | I just confirmed - this book was my first purchase on Amazon. May
       | 24th, 1999. I had just decided to go from undeclared to EECS at
       | Cal and wanted to take a crash course in hardware. I read the
       | book over the summer and never turned back.
        
       | iancmceachern wrote:
       | Love this book!
        
       | bmitc wrote:
       | It has been a long time since I last opened this book, which was
       | a library. I recall being surprised by the glowing reviews since
       | I was dumbfounded by the contents. It all felt very loosey goosey
       | for me, like looking in grandma's cookbook. Did I miss something?
       | Should I revisit?
       | 
       | I found that I clicked much better with MIT's _Foundations of
       | Analog and Digital Electronic Circuits_.
        
         | kragen wrote:
         | if you want to cook a good meal you're probably better off with
         | grandma's cookbook than the second edition of pauling's
         | _general chemistry_
        
         | tubetime wrote:
         | that is why the word _art_ is in the title. regardless, it
         | gives you a good feel for how many engineers actually design
         | stuff in the industry. the problem spaces aren 't fully
         | constrained, so you have to fill in the gaps with experience,
         | guesswork, experimentation, and (yes) art.
        
           | bmitc wrote:
           | Yes, I realize art is in the title and get the general
           | sentiment. But this book is often proposed as a way to learn
           | electronics from scratch. I'm not terribly sure it
           | accomplishes that. My thoughts are that it's probably similar
           | to the Feynman lectures: terrible to learn from as a first
           | introduction but great once you have already learned the
           | material.
        
       | iNerdier wrote:
       | I've been thinking about buying a copy of this but it seems like
       | a pretty steep price to do in a whim. Is the third edition that
       | much more necessary/ up-to-date than a good used copy of the
       | second as a relative novice? Will I end up learning decades old
       | things that are not relevant now?
        
         | vasco wrote:
         | As someone who took EECS and used many old electronics books,
         | you don't need anything newer than probably 1980 to have great
         | electronics knowledge.
         | 
         | If you're interested in Analog (designing transistors in
         | Cadence) and Digital design (making your own CPU in Verilog /
         | VHDL), newer materials make sense because of improvements to
         | processes for analog and FPGA capabilites for digital.
         | 
         | For discrete electronics projects (learning about all the
         | components and their uses) and understanding circuit design
         | etc, anything old is as good as anything new.
        
           | tubetime wrote:
           | for analog IC design, i highly recommend the excellent
           | _Designing Analog Chips_ [1] written by the person who
           | designed the 555 timer. other books are more comprehensive
           | and will give you all the theory, but this book is concise,
           | practical, and free (at least for the pdf version).
           | 
           | [1] http://www.designinganalogchips.com/
        
       | atan2 wrote:
       | There are books that should be used as references, and books that
       | should be used to teach beginners. They are usually different
       | books.
        
       | willis936 wrote:
       | I bought a copy of this in the past few months. I had my trusty
       | AoE 2E but learned that 3E had expanded chapters on what's
       | happened in the past 30 years in precision amplification. Turns
       | out I was working on a schematic for a nanovolt meter (10 kHz BW,
       | 1 kV isolation).
       | 
       | I whipped out every trick in chapters 5 and 7. I transcribed the
       | massive opamp tables into excel to get a lay of the land and was
       | able to find even newer models that exceeded. I settled on
       | OPA4189 for gain, OP224B for isolation, and OPA1633 for output
       | driving / final gain. It's out to fab now.
       | 
       | I initially wanted to use AD since they're the local guys and I
       | like their style more than TI (who came off as a bit culty in
       | their recruiting). Well all of AD's designs still in production
       | for isolation are 5V supply max. What am I supposed to do with
       | that? Analog inputs do best with bipolar 10V. I'm not eating into
       | my noise budget and adding BOM/complexity because a vendor
       | doesn't feel like making the high quality parts that they used
       | to.
        
         | kragen wrote:
         | vintage nos analog devices parts on ebay when
        
       | kragen wrote:
       | people often ask why things like this get linked on the front
       | page
       | 
       | i suspect that in this case it's because two comments on the
       | nand2tetris thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38735066
       | recommended the book (which i remember because i wrote one of
       | them)
       | 
       | possibly if this thread is of interest to you, that one will be
       | too
        
       | tubetime wrote:
       | don't forget that the 3rd edition has a separate volume titled
       | _The Art of Electronics: The X Chapters_ which includes some
       | really fascinating material i 've never seen anywhere else. a lot
       | of practical design tips for working with real components along
       | with some very advanced circuit designs. if you're already an EE,
       | this volume is a great way to sharpen your skillset.
        
       | artsi0m wrote:
       | I used this book for studying for 3 semesters of university. I
       | took Russian translation of 7 edition (second for English
       | version) from uni's library.
        
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