General > General Technical Chat
Is the electronics hobby dead?
<< < (10/15) > >>
MK14:

--- Quote from: Kilrah on July 15, 2016, 11:02:26 pm ---You don't necessarily need to actually make the mistake, just getting into the process of making it will often make you realize something seems wrong soon enough so you recheck and manage to avoid it.

--- End quote ---

I use to think that myself, and to an extent you are right.

But it is a bit like learning to ride a bike. You maybe need to fall off a few times, so that you properly learn that you need to pay attention all the time, and not ride the bike, in a crazy manner.
That's the theory, anyway. Somehow some cyclists who have raced past me at way too fast a "safe" speed, on the pavement, in the UK. Begin to make me think otherwise.

tl;dr
You can read as many books as you like, on how to ride a bike. But if you have never done it at all. You still will be very ropey/bad at it, at first.
G0HZU:

--- Quote ---What the...  :scared: :scared:

 :palm:

--- End quote ---
The new corporate types who have slowly taken over the company also like to see tidy worklabs and the rules for this have become more and more restrictive in the last few years. They basically don't understand engineers and have 'tidied up' by adopting a numbers game (the only game they understand).

So to get a tidier lab you reduce the number and size of the benches and ban storage of unnecessary stuff like old breadboards and parts. Basically the place has been sterilised beyond belief. What is hilarious is the fact they don't understand why the company is slowly shrinking and dying and they are now having crisis meetings because the company has lost its innovative edge and the engineers are leaving. My turn to leave soon I think :)

Red Squirrel:
Hard to tell, it may potentially be less popular but on the other hand it may potentially be making a come back.  Though I'm talking more about Arduino stuff, but that's at least a stepping stone to wanting to learn more. I'm more at the Arduino phase myself but it peaked my interest in electronics.   My nephew who is 14 had a science fair project that was fairly advanced for his age and had electronics involved, and from the sound of it they were playing a lot with that stuff at school.  We never did that when I was in school, I think the most complex thing we did was connect batteries to bulb sockets.   With the internet it's also easier to get into.  Even watching lot of videos and reading lot of tutorials I still don't understand most of the advanced topics, I can't imagine even trying to understand without the internet.  I guess you just bought a lot of books back then, and perhaps because of no internet there was less distraction too.

I feel that this new age of corporate and government sponsored espionage of our lives may hopefully get more people to really consider the functioning of what they buy.  It seems they stick spy stuff in lot of stuff now and it's only going to get worse, so we can't trust anything we buy.  It's one of the reason I don't buy premade home automation stuff, I design and build my own.  But at some point it will be even basic stuff like your toaster.  So more people will want to know at least basic stuff like take something apart and tell what should and should not be there.  On the other hand it's frightening how most people are not even worried about the surveillance state.

The spy stuff is getting scary though as it's now at the die level, so nothing stops them from putting it right within micro controllers for example.   They're already doing it with CPUs. 
Brumby:

--- Quote from: MK14 on July 15, 2016, 08:53:38 pm ---

--- End quote ---

I have that book:

Red Squirrel:
In the quoted image it looks like they're trying out some new drugs or something.  :-DD
Navigation
Message Index
Next page
Previous page
There was an error while thanking
Thanking...

Go to full version
Powered by SMFPacks Advanced Attachments Uploader Mod