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OBSERVATION: Electronics vs Software hobbyists

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baldurn:
The complete noobs do not visit eevblog. On my Facebook I have some groups that get plenty of clueless electronic questions. The classic is some picture of a damaged board and a question about where to source a component. Then gets angry when people start asking questions and pointing out that the obvious fried component is not likely to be the only problem here. Doesn't want help, because knows better, despite not knowing any electronics at all.

Another classic is the guy that expects someone to fix his thing for free or a few bucks. Because it can't be that expensive to fix when a new one is just a hundred usd.


floobydust:
I find EE's don't have to take computing science courses (just one Data Structures) so they tend to be poor at writing firmware. I find they can do it up to a point, but you can tell right away it's missing things.
Numerical methods, algorithms, software engineering - they don't study it. There are the self-proclaimed programmers, people thinking that they are smart - but there is no substitute for learning formal methods, when in a large project.

I note Tesla Inc. will hire a person as a self-proclaimed "genius" to write software, no educational creds required. What could possible go wrong?  :palm:
It's possible the professional British power supply industry hires self-proclaimed "experts". What could possible go wrong?  :palm:

The noobs seem to flood the Arduino forums and such with their H/W and S/W questions. It's actually quite amazing to see the volume of threads answered by the forum members there, high volume. The attitude is different than EEVblog forums but still cringe-worthy posts galore.

thm_w:

--- Quote from: floobydust on December 29, 2023, 03:45:43 am ---I find EE's don't have to take computing science courses (just one Data Structures) so they tend to be poor at writing firmware. I find they can do it up to a point, but you can tell right away it's missing things.
Numerical methods, algorithms, software engineering - they don't study it. There are the self-proclaimed programmers, people thinking that they are smart - but there is no substitute for learning formal methods, when in a large project.
--- End quote ---

I agree completely we tend to be poor firmware writers and not learn proper CS practices. But not taking multiple CS courses is not true, for example: https://www.sfu.ca/engineering/current-students/undergraduate-students/programs-and-requirements/electronics-engineering/curriculum-revised.html (Intro to Software Development for Engineers, Software Design and Analysis for Engineers, Embedded and Real Time System Software.). Also feedback control tends to be very code heavy, but no guarantee you get a teacher than enforces proper coding standards I guess.

HalFET:

--- Quote from: floobydust on December 29, 2023, 03:45:43 am ---I find EE's don't have to take computing science courses (just one Data Structures) so they tend to be poor at writing firmware. I find they can do it up to a point, but you can tell right away it's missing things.
Numerical methods, algorithms, software engineering - they don't study it. There are the self-proclaimed programmers, people thinking that they are smart - but there is no substitute for learning formal methods, when in a large project.

I note Tesla Inc. will hire a person as a self-proclaimed "genius" to write software, no educational creds required. What could possible go wrong?  :palm:
It's possible the professional British power supply industry hires self-proclaimed "experts". What could possible go wrong?  :palm:

The noobs seem to flood the Arduino forums and such with their H/W and S/W questions. It's actually quite amazing to see the volume of threads answered by the forum members there, high volume. The attitude is different than EEVblog forums but still cringe-worthy posts galore.

--- End quote ---

I find it hilarious that you claim EEs are bad at numerical methods and algorithms, while in my experience it are usually EEs and system engineers who figure those out and get them to work, throw in control loops and most software developers are flabergasted when they see a PID controller. What I usually see at work is that the professional software developer types try to implement some library-based solution and then come whining half way through the project that they need several megabytes of RAM to get something done that anyone with half a brain could do on an ancient Z80-based MCU and a couple of hundred bytes of memory because they'd actually took a look at the problem instead of trying to reproduce some design pattern. My favourite one so far was in fact a software developer that had invoked some massive DSP library to implement the aformentioned PID controller.


--- Quote from: SL4P on December 28, 2023, 12:32:55 am ---Does anyone else here notice that electronics hobbyists generally have a better grasp of the subject and language than ‘coding hobbyists ?

--- End quote ---
Which level of hobbyist? Are we talking someone who calls hooking up some stuff to an arduino or raspberry pi an electronics hobbyist or not? If not, the barrier to entry is way higher and usually requires the person to be an adult with some spare cash. Meanwhile, for coding all you require is a computer (and not even that at this point) and the ability to type.

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