Yes, you can build simple stuff like circuit cellar projects with no formal education.
But engineers are not hired to design hobby projects. Look at the Beagle Bone Black or Raspberry Pi. Those are relatively easy entry-level products for new enginers. Now, look and the ARM chip on the Pi or BBB. THose are harder engineering projects but still not near the current state of the art. Then look at the modem chip in a cell phone THAT is total rocket science. Yes, you do need some education of you are going to build things that people want like cell phones and flat panel TVs, 9 channel surround sound AV receivers and lane-keeping adaptive cruise controls for new cars, virtual reality games What is astonishing is how far the bar is raised from hobby to professional now. When I first started with computers in the late 70's there was not a single person alive who could write a computer program to look at thousands of photos of and tell you which of them contaned images of a dog and which were images of cats. Your 1970's vintage FORTRAN programmer, even the best professional would be baffled and fail. Today this task is a "101" level textbook student exercise. We can do things that used to requires high level s of educations and training. But the professionals have moved on. They are working near me in Hawthorne CA teaching rockets to fly backwards out of orbit and self-land themselves on a ship on the open ocean. On Thu, May 2, 2019 at 1:53 PM Gene Heskett <[email protected]> wrote: > On Thursday 02 May 2019 12:30:08 bari wrote: > > > On 5/1/19 11:03 PM, Gene Heskett wrote: > > >> What used to be so hard to build and expensive in analog is often > > >> replaced by software. > > > > > > So it seems, but does it work as well? > > > > As always the answer is "it depends". > > > > How good are your coding skills? > Fair. > > How well do you apply the math? > > Thats one thing my 8th grade education didn't teach well. The teacher > thought he was a standup commedian, telling off color jokes for the > benefit of the girls he was trying to get into their panties after > school. I learned way more math from a TI SR-52 in the early 70's than I > did in school in the '40's. > > > How > > well is that ADC/DAC really performing? Code doesn't drift much over > > time the way electronic materials do in the analog world. > > > > I recall having a discussion with Bob Pease about "audiophiles" and > > distortion you can measure and distortion only they can hear. > > > I think I read that at the time, and I miss that man, he always answered > his fans letters, So did Steve Ciarcia, and those columns was the first > I read when a new issue of Electronics or Circuit Cellar arrived. > > My ears are junk these days, I've worn out too many high powered rifle > barrels without earmuffs, but I can still hear the diff between what > measures at .1% and what measures at .5%. How it works? DamnedifIknow, > but it does. Crossover distortion in an op-amp audio DA positively sets > my ears on fire. And the fav op-amp for audio, the power hog 5532, the > industries fav for 2 decades was totally loaded with it. Easily visible > one any decent scope. > > I got a kick out of Steve one time as we were discussing the relative > merits of an engineering degree vs many years of experience. Steve's > reply was that the most important sheepskin was the one you slept on. :) > > Cheers, Gene Heskett > -- > "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: > soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." > -Ed Howdershelt (Author) > Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene> > > > > _______________________________________________ > Emc-users mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users > -- Chris Albertson Redondo Beach, California _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
