Well, I am a college student (1st year grad) and have followed this discussion with much interest. The dilemmas described sound like my undergrad experience exactly. I was introduced to PSpice as a sophomore but solely through the schematic capture. Imagine my struggle when my teacher included netlists in his Electronic Circuits book the following year (I will reserve further opinions of this book). This was not the PSpice I knew so I ignored them, which may have been detrimental the following year in my mixed-signal VLSI class. The thought of that class still sickens me.
Now I am trying to conquer my former demons and face my fears, which means that I will be taking a class in communications circuits this semester. I have previously posted on here that we will be using WinSpice and have received some alternative methods from several of you on here (thanks!) Coming into this class, I feel like I am a complete newbie when it comes to learning any sort of SPICE program. I am planning on using ngspice as much as possible with WinSpice (and hence, teacher support) as a final safety net. But I agree that to be introduced to the "finer points" earlier would have been very beneficial and could have possibly prevented me from turning away from circuit design. (Sorry - my two cents turned into more of a quarter)
