Author Topic: How fast is a beginner supposed to grow/learn/make?  (Read 3837 times)

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Offline scatterandfocus

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Re: How fast is a beginner supposed to grow/learn/make?
« Reply #25 on: September 22, 2019, 05:40:54 am »
Charles Proteus Steinmetz wrote an interesting paper in 1908 on electrical engineering education.  Here is a snippet of it to draw you in:

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https://www.eeekenya.com/electrical-engineering-education-by-charles-p-steinmetz/

To the subjects taught and the methods of teaching very grave objections may be made. The glaring fault of the college curriculum is that quantity and not quality seems to be the object sought: the amount of instruction crowded into a four years’ course is far beyond that which even the better kind of student can possibly digest. Memorizing details largely takes the place of understanding principles, with the result that a year after graduation much of the matter which had been taught has passed out of the memory of the student, and even examinations given to the senior class on subjects taught during the freshman and sophomore years, reveal conditions which are startling and rather condemnatory to the present methods of teaching.

It stands to reason that with the limited time at his disposal, it is inadvisable for a student to waste time on anything which he forgets in a year or two; only that which it is necessary to know should be taught, and then it should be taught so that at least the better student understands it so thoroughly as never to forget it. That is to say, far better results would be obtained if half or more of the mass of details which the college now attempts to teach, were dropped; if there were taught only the most important subjects-the fundamental principles and their applications-in short, all that is vitally necessary to an intelligent understanding of engineering, but this taught thoroughly, so as not to be forgotten. This, however, requires a far higher grade of teachers than are needed for the mere memorizing of text-book matters, reciting them, at the end of the term passing an examination on the subject and then dropping it.  The salaries offered by the colleges are not such as to attract such men. When the student enters college he is not receptive to an intelligent understanding, for after a four years’ dose in the high school of the same vicious method of memorizing a large mass of half and even less understood matters, the student finds it far easier to memorize the contents of his textbooks than to use his intelligence to understand the subject matter. After graduation, years of practice do for the better class of students what the college should have done-teach them to understand things. It is, however, significant that even now young graduates of foreign universities, in spite of the inferior facilities afforded abroad, do some of the most important electrical development work of this country. Men who never had a college education rise ahead of college graduates. This would be impossible if our college training gave what it should, an intelligent understanding of electrical engineering subjects.
 

Offline FreddieChopin

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Re: How fast is a beginner supposed to grow/learn/make?
« Reply #26 on: September 22, 2019, 06:55:13 am »
Charles Proteus Steinmetz wrote an interesting paper in 1908 on electrical engineering education.  Here is a snippet of it to draw you in:

Quote
https://www.eeekenya.com/electrical-engineering-education-by-charles-p-steinmetz/

To the subjects taught and the methods of teaching very grave objections may be made. The glaring fault of the college curriculum is that quantity and not quality seems to be the object sought: the amount of instruction crowded into a four years’ course is far beyond that which even the better kind of student can possibly digest. Memorizing details largely takes the place of understanding principles, with the result that a year after graduation much of the matter which had been taught has passed out of the memory of the student, and even examinations given to the senior class on subjects taught during the freshman and sophomore years, reveal conditions which are startling and rather condemnatory to the present methods of teaching.

It stands to reason that with the limited time at his disposal, it is inadvisable for a student to waste time on anything which he forgets in a year or two; only that which it is necessary to know should be taught, and then it should be taught so that at least the better student understands it so thoroughly as never to forget it. That is to say, far better results would be obtained if half or more of the mass of details which the college now attempts to teach, were dropped; if there were taught only the most important subjects-the fundamental principles and their applications-in short, all that is vitally necessary to an intelligent understanding of engineering, but this taught thoroughly, so as not to be forgotten. This, however, requires a far higher grade of teachers than are needed for the mere memorizing of text-book matters, reciting them, at the end of the term passing an examination on the subject and then dropping it.  The salaries offered by the colleges are not such as to attract such men. When the student enters college he is not receptive to an intelligent understanding, for after a four years’ dose in the high school of the same vicious method of memorizing a large mass of half and even less understood matters, the student finds it far easier to memorize the contents of his textbooks than to use his intelligence to understand the subject matter. After graduation, years of practice do for the better class of students what the college should have done-teach them to understand things. It is, however, significant that even now young graduates of foreign universities, in spite of the inferior facilities afforded abroad, do some of the most important electrical development work of this country. Men who never had a college education rise ahead of college graduates. This would be impossible if our college training gave what it should, an intelligent understanding of electrical engineering subjects.

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Offline nigelwright7557

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Re: How fast is a beginner supposed to grow/learn/make?
« Reply #27 on: December 28, 2019, 12:41:05 am »
I have been in electronics for 40 years and have never stopped learning.
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Offline worsthorse

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Re: How fast is a beginner supposed to grow/learn/make?
« Reply #28 on: December 28, 2019, 10:53:15 pm »
At a hobby level, most 'make' projects are copy-and-paste.  Somebody else did the engineering calcs and thousands of people use the results.  Progress in the 'make' field can be quite fast as long as the hobbyist doesn't bother to go back and figure out how the circuit really works.  I'm thinking about the simple 1 transistor capacitor coupled amplifier with emitter degeneration.  There's a lot of arithmetic in that little circuit.

What is being 'learned'?  Unless the hobbyist is willing to spend the time with datasheets and calculations, the project is just copy-and-paste and very little is actually learned.  That's why college doesn't spend all that much time in the lab and lots of time with calcs.  The standing joke is that new engineers couldn't build a circuit if their life depended on it.  But there wouldn't be a design for the technicians to build were it not for engineers doing the math.

First, decide 'at what level' and then decide on what is to be learned.

I don't know if I agree with this. Well, actually I do know, I don't agree that hobbyists are mostly restricted to doing cut-and-paste copies of some engineer's design.  All you have to do is pick up a copy of Solid State Design for the Radio Amateur, Art of Electronics, or EMRFD to see that hobbyists, if willing to learn some practical theory and rules, are capable of building quite sophisticated electronic equipment.

I say this as a hobbyist who happens to have a degree in electrical engineering and experience building commercial gear. I think a substantive difference between engineering and hobbyist level work is in reproducibility, reliability, and predictability rather than electronics theory.  As an engineer I focus on designing stuff that can be manufactured, installed, used, maintained and make a profit. As a hobbyist, I probably don't care about any of those things very much. Think of it this way: the hobbyist' work usually stops at the prototype and the engineer's work really starts there.

Why does this matter?  Because it is easy to think, as a beginner, that you have to have an engineering or software degree or a lot of maths training before you will know enough to design and build interesting stuff and that just isn't so.  Should a beginner eventually know how to work with complex numbers, understand vectors, etc? Yes, eventually and for the same reasons they will want to work their way through a book like Electronics of Radio or spend some time learning how to solder or use an oscilloscope.  But do you need a lot of finite analysis or calculus or solid state physics to design and build interesting and complex circuits? Not really, though you better know all that stuff if you are planning on building a thousand of anything.

PS - I do agree with one thing... if you are going to design stuff, you will spend a lot of time doing calculations and looking at data books, though the calculations are likely to be algebraic and the databook research of the "hmm, that looks good enough" sort.


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Offline rstofer

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Re: How fast is a beginner supposed to grow/learn/make?
« Reply #29 on: December 28, 2019, 11:22:39 pm »
There are hobbyists at all levels.  I have never worked a day in my life as an electronics engineer (I did consult on one project, back in the early '80s) and even my MSEE was done as a hobby.  I just like digital and that's the part of the sandbox I play in.  I wanted to know a lot about computers but electronics has always been a hobby.

I didn't care for analog, this math was too cumbersome and, back in the early '70s, we didn't have 'solvers' to help with the work.  Today we have fantastic tools and I'm spending a little more time with analog - notably, analog computing.  I struggled with differential equations in college but they are fun with an analog computer!  Of course, they are also solvable with MATLAB (and neatly with Simulink) and even FORTRAN.  Well, maybe not 'solvable', but they can definitely be viewed.

So, given a range of hobbyists, we need to settle in on "what is a beginner", "what is somewhat accomplished" and "what is over-the-top".  People can progress as far as they want but from the posts I read around here, most are at the "playing with Arduino" level.  This is good!  It takes quite a bit of effort to get some of those projects to work.  Then there is the possibility of modifying them for some other function.  The fact that example projects can be copied and pasted can be a real boon to education - if they are viewed in that light.  Otherwise, they are just a duplicate of somebody else's project.

For the newcomer, wanting to actually learn electronics as opposed to just doing the copy and paste thing, I would expect them to know DC circuits in about 6 months.  It could be much sooner, it could take longer, but for table stakes, I would say Ohm's Law, Kirchhoff's Laws, Thevenin and Norton should be well in hand within a few months. Pretty much the same as the first semester in EE school.   It just  doesn't take that long to go through the Khan Academy Electrical Engineering videos.  But there needs to be time at the breadboard and that will drag it out.  Personally, I learn very little from lectures.  I'm more of a hands on type of learner.  AC circuits would take another couple of months and then it's off to transistors, op amps and other more advanced topics.

Then there is the issue of "do we really need Kirchhoff's Laws (and the others?".  Well, now we get back to the concept of "learn electronics".  Are we learning to be capable of designing/understanding circuits or are we just learning the resistor color code?

Everybody makes their own choices.  I made mine a long time ago and saved electronics for my hobby and worked in electrical for my living.


With all the resources on the web, the beginner can go as far as they want and they can progress at their own rate.  Everything is out there for the taking.

 

Offline rstofer

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Re: How fast is a beginner supposed to grow/learn/make?
« Reply #30 on: December 28, 2019, 11:37:22 pm »

 don't know if I agree with this. Well, actually I do know, I don't agree that hobbyists are mostly restricted to doing cut-and-paste copies of some engineer's design.  All you have to do is pick up a copy of Solid State Design for the Radio Amateur, Art of Electronics, or EMRFD to see that hobbyists, if willing to learn some practical theory and rules, are capable of building quite sophisticated electronic equipment.
Yes, but by that time they may still be hobbyists but they aren't 'beginners'.
Quote
Why does this matter?  Because it is easy to think, as a beginner, that you have to have an engineering or software degree or a lot of maths training before you will know enough to design and build interesting stuff and that just isn't so.  Should a beginner eventually know how to work with complex numbers, understand vectors, etc? Yes, eventually and for the same reasons they will want to work their way through a book like Electronics of Radio or spend some time learning how to solder or use an oscilloscope.  But do you need a lot of finite analysis or calculus or solid state physics to design and build interesting and complex circuits? Not really, though you better know all that stuff if you are planning on building a thousand of anything.

PS - I do agree with one thing... if you are going to design stuff, you will spend a lot of time doing calculations and looking at data books, though the calculations are likely to be algebraic and the databook research of the "hmm, that looks good enough" sort.

Yup!  You can't even blink an LED without Ohm's Law to figure out the resistor value or the datasheet to find Vf and If plus the datasheet for the driver to find out what current it can provide plus a view of the graph of Vout vs Iout because, sure as shooting, Vout is going to sag with a heavy (relatively) load.  Even the easiest thing, blinking an LED, takes at least 2 datasheets and Ohm's Law to get it right.  Even then, you don't have to design for the maximum If.  Sometimes half that much is bright enough - and it saves power, and heat dissipation.

Electronics is a numbers game.  That's why we have datasheets full of them!  Every single number on the datasheet represents a corner in the safe operating area.  Things the device can do and things it can't.  All of them are important.

Sometimes even I don't agree with me but this whole topic has to revolve around the user.  How much do they want to know?  And how fast do they want to learn it?
 

Offline Electro Fan

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Re: How fast is a beginner supposed to grow/learn/make?
« Reply #31 on: December 29, 2019, 01:48:09 am »

Sometimes even I don't agree with me....
  :)

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Offline worsthorse

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Re: How fast is a beginner supposed to grow/learn/make?
« Reply #32 on: December 29, 2019, 05:46:45 am »

 don't know if I agree with this. Well, actually I do know, I don't agree that hobbyists are mostly restricted to doing cut-and-paste copies of some engineer's design.  All you have to do is pick up a copy of Solid State Design for the Radio Amateur, Art of Electronics, or EMRFD to see that hobbyists, if willing to learn some practical theory and rules, are capable of building quite sophisticated electronic equipment.
Yes, but by that time they may still be hobbyists but they aren't 'beginners'.
Quote
Why does this matter?  Because it is easy to think, as a beginner, that you have to have an engineering or software degree or a lot of maths training before you will know enough to design and build interesting stuff and that just isn't so.  Should a beginner eventually know how to work with complex numbers, understand vectors, etc? Yes, eventually and for the same reasons they will want to work their way through a book like Electronics of Radio or spend some time learning how to solder or use an oscilloscope.  But do you need a lot of finite analysis or calculus or solid state physics to design and build interesting and complex circuits? Not really, though you better know all that stuff if you are planning on building a thousand of anything.

PS - I do agree with one thing... if you are going to design stuff, you will spend a lot of time doing calculations and looking at data books, though the calculations are likely to be algebraic and the databook research of the "hmm, that looks good enough" sort.

Yup!  You can't even blink an LED without Ohm's Law to figure out the resistor value or the datasheet to find Vf and If plus the datasheet for the driver to find out what current it can provide plus a view of the graph of Vout vs Iout because, sure as shooting, Vout is going to sag with a heavy (relatively) load.  Even the easiest thing, blinking an LED, takes at least 2 datasheets and Ohm's Law to get it right.  Even then, you don't have to design for the maximum If.  Sometimes half that much is bright enough - and it saves power, and heat dissipation.

Electronics is a numbers game.  That's why we have datasheets full of them!  Every single number on the datasheet represents a corner in the safe operating area.  Things the device can do and things it can't.  All of them are important.

Sometimes even I don't agree with me but this whole topic has to revolve around the user.  How much do they want to know?  And how fast do they want to learn it?

I think we agree on most of this... the problem is related to "how much do you want to know?" ... beginners can't really answer that question, right? Because we don't know what we don't know yet. But if you start with the question, "here's what I want to do, how do I do it?"  you get some focus.  That's why I recommend that self-learners and hobbyists dig into a book like Art of Electronics. It gives one a way to begin learning how to do interesting stuff quickly and avoids the "you have to be an engineer to design" trap. It also gives you a clue about what you don't know so you looking for ways to learn it.

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Offline tggzzz

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Re: How fast is a beginner supposed to grow/learn/make?
« Reply #33 on: December 29, 2019, 09:19:48 am »
I think a substantive difference between engineering and hobbyist level work is in reproducibility, reliability, and predictability rather than electronics theory.  As an engineer I focus on designing stuff that can be manufactured, installed, used, maintained and make a profit. As a hobbyist, I probably don't care about any of those things very much. Think of it this way: the hobbyist' work usually stops at the prototype and the engineer's work really starts there.

Pretty much true.

I'd add that hobbyists think (to some extent) about how things work, whereas engineers also think about how things fail - and how to reduce the frequency and consequences of failure. Yes, that means many software programmers are no better than hobbyists.

I'd also add another distinction, one that is far less clear cut. Hobbyists repeat previous designs, possibly with minor variations. Engineers either create novel designs or apply existing designs in novel situations.

And those observations imply a way for beginners to start as hobbyists and progress to engineering, if they wish and are capable.

Plus those observations do not contradict your other observations...

Quote
Why does this matter?  Because it is easy to think, as a beginner, that you have to have an engineering or software degree or a lot of maths training before you will know enough to design and build interesting stuff and that just isn't so.  Should a beginner eventually know how to work with complex numbers, understand vectors, etc? Yes, eventually and for the same reasons they will want to work their way through a book like Electronics of Radio or spend some time learning how to solder or use an oscilloscope.  But do you need a lot of finite analysis or calculus or solid state physics to design and build interesting and complex circuits? Not really, though you better know all that stuff if you are planning on building a thousand of anything.

PS - I do agree with one thing... if you are going to design stuff, you will spend a lot of time doing calculations and looking at data books, though the calculations are likely to be algebraic and the databook research of the "hmm, that looks good enough" sort.
There are lies, damned lies, statistics - and ADC/DAC specs.
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Offline tggzzz

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Re: How fast is a beginner supposed to grow/learn/make?
« Reply #34 on: December 29, 2019, 09:34:50 am »
Yup!  You can't even blink an LED without Ohm's Law to figure out the resistor value or the datasheet to find Vf and If plus the datasheet for the driver to find out what current it can provide plus a view of the graph of Vout vs Iout because, sure as shooting, Vout is going to sag with a heavy (relatively) load.  Even the easiest thing, blinking an LED, takes at least 2 datasheets and Ohm's Law to get it right.  Even then, you don't have to design for the maximum If.  Sometimes half that much is bright enough - and it saves power, and heat dissipation.

That is significantly complicated by the realisation that Ohms law is a linear relationship and the a LED's VI curve is very non-linear. The traditional solution is to plot a resistor's load-line on the VI graph, and observe where the lines intersect.

Quote
Electronics is a numbers game.  That's why we have datasheets full of them!  Every single number on the datasheet represents a corner in the safe operating area.  Things the device can do and things it can't.  All of them are important.

Sometimes even I don't agree with me but this whole topic has to revolve around the user.  How much do they want to know?  And how fast do they want to learn it?

Yup.
« Last Edit: December 29, 2019, 09:36:24 am by tggzzz »
There are lies, damned lies, statistics - and ADC/DAC specs.
Glider pilot's aphorism: "there is no substitute for span". Retort: "There is a substitute: skill+imagination. But you can buy span".
Having fun doing more, with less
 

Offline worsthorse

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Re: How fast is a beginner supposed to grow/learn/make?
« Reply #35 on: December 29, 2019, 03:30:13 pm »
though i could go on, it looks like i have reached the

 :horse:   :horse:   :horse:

point in this conversation.  ;D

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Offline CatalinaWOW

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Re: How fast is a beginner supposed to grow/learn/make?
« Reply #36 on: December 29, 2019, 06:05:13 pm »
To OPs original question.  Is he slow?  None of us can answer that.  The question is whether he is meeting his objectives.  If he is a hobby person and having fun the answer is yes regardless of his pace.  If he is a student preparing for a career the answer is maybe, leaning towards probably yes.  The kinds and amounts of skills he is describing are appropriate, perhaps a little ahead of the game for a student in the early part of their education.  Is he in a professional situation?  The answer here is most complicated.  We are all aware that many barely competent engineers are employed.  If this is OPs situation (already employed in the field) his best bet is to look around him.  As long as he is not last in his pack he may survive.  But if he isn't in the lead group he really needs to apply himself to learning.
 


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