Modern Electronics (was Re: List charter mods & headcount... ;

From: Tony Duell <ard_at_p850ug1.demon.co.uk>
Date: Sun Jun 20 16:08:54 2004

>
> On Sun, 20 Jun 2004, Teo Zenios wrote:
>
> > Tools are great, I use them myself. But you have to have some knowledge of
> > what's going on to know when the answer the tool gives you is wrong (maybe
> > you didn't feed the tool enough information, forgot something, or there is a

Truer words were never spoken (or written :-)). Some idiots actually
believe that adverts that claim a CAD system will turn you into an
engineer. It won;t!.

Don't get me wrong. Computer _aided_ design is great (as opposed to
computer-hindered-design when the so-called CAD program does all it can
to prevent you getting the thing working). But you have to understand
what you are doing and why.

Otherwise you end up with the design that looks good on the screen but
which can't possibly work wrll in practice.

Oh yes, I have a dozen or so 'tests' for electronic CAD programs --
circuits that may not do what you'd naively think, or which require
digital similators to do something other than blindly applying the inputs
and looking at the outputs, etc. So far I've yet to find a CAD program
that gets any one of them 'right' (defined and what I actually measured
when I built the circuit). What this means is that the results of any of
said CAD programs can't be trusted -- you have to use intellegence when
interpretting them.

> I think the question boils down: Are we losing any knowledge as each
> generation passes?
>
> My instinct would say "no", since the world is still working. People

By your own admission we _are_ losing knowledge (in that, as you say,
valves are not taught any more, for example).

> still understand electronics, mechanics, physics, etc. People are still
> being taught the fundamentals. One learns more in classrooms today than

Maybe US schools are different to those in the UK, but over here,
fundamentals are most certainly not being taugh. Heck, logarithms are no
longer taught in the the equivalent of your high schools, I believe.

[FIWW< the 'justification' for that is that logarithms were only used to
make it easier to multiply numbers, and as everyone does that on a
calculator now, logarithms have no use. You know as well as I do that
this is totally bogus!]

> they did 100 years ago. Much of the subject matter has changed, but the
> basics remain the same.
>
> For example, we no longer learn how tubes/valves work, because we don't
> design with them anymore. However, the functional basics are the same as
> with transistors. We don't learn in detail how tubes or transistors work
> because we aren't going to be designing and building new ones. Now we

This is something that worries me. You seem to be happy with transsitors
as are currently available without wondering if there's something better
that could be designed ('better' meaning lower power consumption or
faster, or...). I am not. And IMHO to design a better device you'd better
understand the current ones.

> learn how FPGAs and the like work because that's what we design with. In

Having seen the results of people designing with FPGAs who don't
understand basic electronics, I can't possibly agree with this!

> That's what most people don't realize school is all about. It's not about
> learning a subject matter, it's learning how to THINK properly (a skill

What planet are you on? Schools, at least in the UK, are there to stop
people thinking. If you think -- if you challenge (politely, I may add)
the teacher, if you start asking relevant questions, then you are a
'troublemaker' and will be expelled or worse.

It nearly happened to me several times (and yes, the questions I were
asking were certaioly applicable to the subject, and yes, the teacher was
talking rubbish half the time (which is why I asked said questions).

> many people lack today, partially as evidenced by the mess the world is
> currently in).

-tony
Received on Sun Jun 20 2004 - 16:08:54 BST