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Re: Zero Hedge: "What Gen Z Learned From Millennials: Skip College"

Posted: Wed Jan 09, 2019 8:41 am
by emrr
Autodidact here. I wish I had had the ability to suffer through formal education for many reasons, but just couldn't at the time. Probably better suited to it now. I'm always frustrated by people exploring simple electronics theoreticals online when they could answer the question for themselves on the bench in a few minutes. There are blind spots in both places.

Re: Zero Hedge: "What Gen Z Learned From Millennials: Skip College"

Posted: Wed Jan 09, 2019 9:59 am
by JR.
mediatechnology wrote: ↑Tue Jan 08, 2019 10:12 am
Gold wrote: ↑Mon Jan 07, 2019 9:53 am I like autodidacts and the music business is full of them. The arts in general is fairly egalitarian. No one cares where you went to school. It’s about doing the job.
I had to lookup autodidacts to find out I'm an autodidact.

I tended to go less to books for answers and went to the work bench instead.
Sometimes its easier to measure than calculate.
I would suck at IC design.
OK I had to look it up too.... At best formal education prepares us to continue learning after we enter the real world, while I am suspicious of modern education even accomplishing that. Thinking back to when we were in school they never anticipated the kinds of technology we now work with routinely, while the basic laws of physics remain unchanged. An interesting old quote "If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics." is widely attributed to Feynman (famous physicist)-

I would love to design semiconductors and suspect a lot of it is like discrete circuit design just with a different palette of components. These days it is probably starting to resemble conventional circuit design as standard building blocks get cut and pasted into larger ICs. I took one semiconductor physics course in night school, but dropped out mid way through when I got a better job in a different state. At Peavey we kicked the tires on one full custom IC, but that program crashed when I knew more about IC design than the wet behind the ears junior engineer assigned to work with us. The Peavey design incorporated an OTA along with other pretty straightforward circuitry. When I tried to impress upon the junior engineer the need for a good performance, closely matched and thermal tracking LTP for the OTA front end, he dismissed my concern as easily remedied with emitter degeneration resistors, indicating he had no clue about how OTAs work. :lol: I suspect the cream of that crop (IC designers) are pretty impressive, but mainly have more levers to work with than we do.

Hopefully we all keep learning as we grow.... I like to joke that life gives us tests, and only later the answers. This implies continuous learning. I have some neighbors that seem to have stopped. :lol:

JR

Re: Zero Hedge: "What Gen Z Learned From Millennials: Skip College"

Posted: Wed Jan 09, 2019 10:05 am
by mediatechnology
emrr wrote: ↑Wed Jan 09, 2019 8:41 am I'm always frustrated by people exploring simple electronics theoreticals online when they could answer the question for themselves on the bench in a few minutes.
That's always been my approach and the starting point for many threads here.

I will say this about my step-daughters: Both are very happy doing what they do despite very different higher-education paths.

I have been lucky enough to work in a field that was also my hobby.