Digital Electronics or Microcontrollers

[Muhammad Nasar]

An institute is offering a digital electronics and microcontroller courses, i want to ask that can i go for Microcontroller's course rather than going for digital electronics course and i also want to tell that i don't have enough time as my university is going to start and i can only do only one course and also that i don't know c language as i have heard that c is necessary for programming microcontrollers.

[joelby]

I'm not sure what your question was, if any.

What's the point of understanding microcontrollers without first understanding digital electronics? If you want to learn about programming, why not take a computer programming course in C?

[A-sic Enginerd]

Understanding digital electronics will take you a LONG way in understanding not only microcontrollers, but a lot of other things as well.

In my 4 year degree we actually never had an formal classes or presentations on microcontrollers. We learned them just by using them. But I did have 2 semesters that were dedicated to nothing but logic design.

[tronxkid]

You can't divide Digital Electronics and Micro controllers in to two separate Categories. Cuz Micro controllers are a sub category of digital electronics. If you really in to MCUs, First you must have some kind of knowledge in Electronics. Then you should sharpen your programming skills. ( Learning C is not enough cuz different MCUs use different types of compilers and C variations.)

So I believe that you should get classes for electronics and learn MCU programming by playing with them.

[RayJones]

I would have thought microcontrollers was an expansion option on digital electronics, not the other way around....

[Mechatrommer]

ok i dont have comment to add. just i think i'm the exception from the 4 posts above. i mean, i've programmed mcus, but i still dont know how to convert ttl to cmos voltage correctly, in practise i mean. and i'm still vague on the definition/implementation and "the why of the differences"

[westfw]

"digital electronics" is an impossibly broad term, including everything from IC fabrication to the transistor-level design of gates to the gate-level design of (assorted types of) larger structures to board-level design of "things" to system-level design of bigger things...  "Microcontrollers" isn't quite so broad, but could still range from a software-intensive class to a hardware-intensive class, and from something focusing on a single micro to something surveying (more shallowly) a range.
(a digital electronics class will probably not include any software.)

You'll need to read the fine print.

I'd somewhat expect a microcontroller class to be more immediately useful, and a digital electronics class to be more "background" material...

[A-sic Enginerd]

"digital electronics" is an impossibly broad term, including everything from IC fabrication to the transistor-level design of gates to the gate-level design of (assorted types of) larger structures to board-level design of "things" to system-level design of bigger things...  "Microcontrollers" isn't quite so broad, but could still range from a software-intensive class to a hardware-intensive class, and from something focusing on a single micro to something surveying (more shallowly) a range.
(a digital electronics class will probably not include any software.)

You'll need to read the fine print.

I'd somewhat expect a microcontroller class to be more immediately useful, and a digital electronics class to be more "background" material...

I would agree with everything you said.
My initial response above was based on OP mentioning a "digital electronics course offered at his institute." I took this to mean learning the fundamentals of things like Boolean algebra, sequential logic, gate level design, etc. Most places I've seen, if they are going to cover things like IC fab or transistor level design they're usually called something like VLSI design, or semiconductor physics, etc.

Thinking about it more, I guess I'd adjust my response to the OP to ask "what are looking to get out of it".  As westfw pointed out, if you're wanting a quick ramp on "microcontrollers" so you can start playing with them, then yeah, maybe that would be a better option. My caution there though would be to not have too high expectations on what you may get out of it. Eg: the class may only cover a single family of controllers. You may learn that family or maybe even just a single part very well and in complete thoroughness, but I wouldn't say at that point you "know microcontrollers."  On the flip side, you may cover a broad spectrum of what defines a microcontroller and where they're used and all the 30 kabillion flavors of them out there, but that doesn't get you very far on being able to make use of one any time soon. Course description I'm sure will give decent insight into what it covers.

Assuming for a moment the "digital electronics" covers things like gate level design and such, it's something you may not be able to make a tremendous amount of use with in the immediate, but it will serve you well in the long run.

One final note, and this would be for anyone / everyone that plays / works with microcontrollers - some software engineering classes will serve you well. If your immediate response is "but I already know C or assembly", then you're missing my point. Software engineering is completely independent of any specific language. Eg: my first semester of the software side of my degree was tittles "Programming Concepts and Methodologies pt. 1". It was taught using Turbo Pascal of all things, but the concepts still ring true today.