General > General Technical Chat
The thanked counter
Zero999:
Ultimately it's Dave's decision, but it's interesting to see how popular it is.
I hope MrMobodies doesn't mind me using his image as an example. I'll change it to my own, if he wants.
RoGeorge:
The "Say Thanks" button was meant to express gratitude without polluting the forum with non technical "Thank you" replies.
Last week, Dave decided to display and use the thanks counter as a "value" score to classify the users, and/or to increase the addiction to the forum, which I don't like at all, so I voted no.
\[\star\ \star\ \star\]
My speculation is Dave wants to increase the "engagement" and to bring new users, so only good intents, yet I strongly believe the TikTok/Onlyfans/Facebook kind of platform engagement studies and recipes does not apply well to the EEVblog crowd. I mean not well for the long term. Might increase the numbers for this year, but at the cost of turning the forum into trash in 5 years.
To attract new users, I'll rather say to extend the software related sections of the forum, that's the opposite of collapsing them for the sake of less scrolling in the main page. Who reads the main page anyways. As a side note, I've started paying attention to EEVblog forum after Google searches pointed me to forum topics with very high quality answers.
I think those search results might have been influenced by Dave's videos I was watching on YouTube at the time. Then I've register because this EEVblog platform was a forum, with meaningful community and interesting discussions, and not just a rigid Q&A platform like stackoverflow.
Back to increasing forum's audience, I'm no expert and made no studies, but it looks to me like analog electronic is more about the past hobbies. Digital electronics is the norm now, though the IC integration scale is so high that the digital electronics became out of reach for the average enthusiast, except maybe for the most tenacious ones or for those that are also doing that for a living. So it all turns to mostly software now.
The joke that for each 1 analog engineer there are 10 digital engineers for each there are 100 software engineers is funny because it's true. Building your own radio or stereo amplifier as a popular hobby has long gone.
The areas that are expected to show growth in the near future, IMHO, are all about software. The interest in hardware is only expected to shrink. I expect that because the complexity is increasing very fast, and the entry bar is higher with each decade, if not with each year.
Electronics will be dealt with more and more in terms of functional blocks, rather than in terms of electronic components. So the interest will be about controlling such blocks to achieve a given project, which control right now means writing software.
I think the next "Popular Electronics" will be "Popular Programming".
EEVblog already has a foot in this with all the embedded/programming/computers sections, and with some very knowledgeable software people contributing to those topics.
Another way to add more users might be by adding sections/subforums about more generic making/crafting/learning skills, not necessarily electronics related. IDK if that would be a good idea, in the sense that there is a certain limit of newcomers, in terms of numbers and areas of interest, that can be welcomed to any community without annihilating it.
mc172:
Pff, I don't care either way. :-//
NiHaoMike:
--- Quote from: RoGeorge on February 20, 2022, 12:49:14 pm ---Back to increasing forum's audience, I'm no expert and made no studies, but it looks to me like analog electronic is more about the past hobbies. Digital electronics is the norm now, though the IC integration scale is so high that the digital electronics became out of reach for the average enthusiast, except maybe for the most tenacious ones or for those that are also doing that for a living.
--- End quote ---
FPGAs have become very affordable in the last few years, so now an engineer can design digital circuits without having to use a soldering iron or breadboard. (Tiffany Yep would be one example - she doesn't really do much with the hardware other than plugging ready made modules together.) What we need is an easier way to learn FPGA programming.
--- Quote ---The joke that for each 1 analog engineer there are 10 digital engineers for each there are 100 software engineers is funny because it's true. Building your own radio or stereo amplifier as a popular hobby has long gone.
--- End quote ---
The latest amplifier chips like the TPA3255 are in fine pitch SMD packages which are quite difficult for a beginner to solder, and that's before even getting a board designed and manufactured to solder it onto. Much more economical to just buy premade boards and possibly mod them for better performance. For some reason, those boards are a lot cheaper than similar boards already mounted in an enclosure.
As for homemade RF circuits, there's a good reason RF is often called "black magic".
RoGeorge:
--- Quote from: NiHaoMike on February 20, 2022, 01:35:02 pm ---FPGAs have become very affordable in the last few years, so now an engineer can design digital circuits without having to use a soldering iron or breadboard. (Tiffany Yep would be one example - she doesn't really do much with the hardware other than plugging ready made modules together.) What we need is an easier way to learn FPGA programming.
--- End quote ---
That is biggest pitfall, indeed. The prices became very tempting, but learning FPGA, or using one in a hobby project, is far from easy.
Maybe software compilers able to generate HDL schematics would be the way to put FPGA in the hands of enthusiasts, but the FPGA manufacturers doesn't seem interested, they keep all closed source, and often their toolchains cost a fortune even without the high level syntheses translators from programming to HDL.
I bet a "Python FPGA" devboard would be very attractive, if that would be possible.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
Go to full version