the learning process && the Kid Senshi Gandamu Syndrome - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: legacy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 17, 2016, 01:00:53 pm
content: theKid Senshi Gandamu Syndrome: when one, who wants to build hismobile suit RX-78secretly in the darkness of his garage, is not skilled enough (just to use an euphemism) to be aware about the effort behind the hood, and he/she doesn't believe in universities, because he/she believes that in no place is as good as the internet where "you can study Python in the morning, modern art after breakfast and quantum mechanics at night".Interesting!As result, it seems that the symptoms of the syndrome manifest themselves in the digital land of internet, people starting topics claiming to be able to write complex things from the scratch and without the need to have a good university background.those guys believe that everything concerning computer science might be made without a solid engineer background, including the development their own assembler, their own C compiler, their own computer box from scratch, just to demonstrate that "universities are completely pointless", as they claim that the linear path of the learning process should be -1- having free time, and -2- an access to internetWhat do you think about, guys? do you believe in university as the best the learning process ?

author: Paul Price
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 17, 2016, 06:59:29 pm
content: You should limit your consumption of coffee.Try telling this to an impoverished member of a remote village trying to get a solar light to work so to be able to read a book at night.

author: hamster_nz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 17, 2016, 07:57:17 pm
content: Since you asked me for my view, here it is...Passion and an exceptional natural talent can make up for a lot, especially when combined with a vast library of information. If at all possible it should be nurtured. If they really don't have a talent for it, then just leave them to discover that for themselves. All of us followed 'dead ends' while in the exuberance of youth - attempting to become a musician, being an artist, designing a CPU or OS - it is all part of finding yourself.If you feel that somebody is worthy of ridicule because they are relatively uneducated but very passionate about their dreams, then you should be willing to accept ridicule because you required a formal education due to you lacking the passion to educate yourself. Your attitude to others isn't really any better, just the different side of the coin.... and I'm sure you would have had words to say about a young Srinivasa Ramanujan too.

author: hamster_nz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 17, 2016, 08:32:50 pm
content: Quote from: legacy on February 17, 2016, 08:03:28 pmAre you saying that young people shouldn't ask questions above their grade of education?Or are you saying that somebody seeking advice knowledge above their level of education is a worry?How hard is it to offer useful advice? For the last question it would be "Read the Purple Dragon Book (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compilers:_Principles,_Techniques,_and_Tools), and do all the exercises".QuoteWhat - no middle ground like "Although probably not the best learning process, going to University will be a valuable part of your education"?I find the sale bin in the University Book Store is an excellent source of learning - far better SNR than the internet, but a little more expensive.

author: lincoln
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: February 17, 2016, 08:37:16 pm
content: While I am bereft of a university education, it dose not mean I did not have teachers. University is a fine path, just not mine. I am aware of my short comings but also recognize that I have had a wider experience than I would say most fresh out of uni would have. I am not a common case.

author: hamster_nz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 17, 2016, 09:45:49 pm
content: QuoteI agree, any conversations with somebody who has an unshakable belief that they are correct, and that they know the one true path, and that anybody who doesn't agree with this view is wrong and must be convinced otherwise quickly becomes tiresome.And that includes this one

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 17, 2016, 11:35:33 pm
content: Quote from: legacy on February 17, 2016, 01:00:53 pmhaving trouble with your code lately?

author: AlfBaz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 18, 2016, 01:23:28 am
content: Quote from: legacy on February 17, 2016, 09:27:56 pmI'm convinced!Since I'm not officially "educated" it looks like I've been wasting alotof my time, so...FOR SALEA tonne of dev boards, compilers, IDE's, heaps of measuring equipment...As the only recognised knowledge is one given to you by officialdom (who have managed to monetise nearly every subject on earth) the only hobby left for me is drinking O0

author: AlfBaz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 18, 2016, 01:26:43 am
content: Quote from: AlfBaz on February 18, 2016, 01:23:28 amArgh, that costs money too! Who knew

author: retrolefty
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 18, 2016, 01:37:11 am
content: I'm sorry legacy, you just come across as being too elitist in your opinions for my tastes. No reasonable person would discount the value of a University education in whatever endeavor they wish to pursue in life, but to make it in the real world there are many examples of people not completing formal education, Bill Gates comes to mind.QuoteBut you do seem to have unpaid time to spend on complaining about certain postings on the Web. Why do you spend time even reading their posts and claims?Me thinks you complain too much.

author: Rerouter
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 18, 2016, 01:45:58 am
content: There is stuff that can be learned on the internet, sometimes to very high levels of certain topics,The biggest limitation comes to having the correct vocabulary for what you are trying to find information on. As most search engines seem to get stuck chasing the wrong things because you cannot give it the right context. And at the same time above certain levels your unlikely to find a breakdown of certain concepts.A single person could learn all that is required to build a PC from sand and metal ore, even begin to accomplish it, but it would be by no means fast, or cheap, likely many decades,Most of this knowledge would come from patent summaries and books that may be recommended for similar areas, rather than forum discussions.As someone who has attended a trade school but not a university, there is the ability to learn most things online, but you'll need to filter out 90% of it to find what you want.

author: hamster_nz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 18, 2016, 02:34:42 am
content: Legacy, what would your reply be if I said "I'm 16 and I want to write an IBM PC compatible emulator, how large an undertaking do you think that would be (in kB of code)?"

author: Bruce Abbott
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 18, 2016, 03:06:33 am
content: Quote from: legacy on February 17, 2016, 01:00:53 pmSkills arelearned. The question is, can you learn enoughfrom the Internetto get the programming skills you need. I say yes!QuoteThis is a completely different issue. People who make such claims either need to show the proof (working code) or shut up.QuoteGood for him! Perhaps he will find that it is a little harder than he thought. OTOH, with enough time and effort anything is possible.QuoteWe all agree that Z80 is a piece of cake. Is MIPS really that different? I say no!My first computer was a CDP1802 kit. This was back in 1979 when there wasno Internetto get information from, and the the only programming documentation I had was a photocopy of the CPU datasheet with an opcode listing. Yet I was able to figure it out, even though I had no formal electronics or computer training whatsoever. That 1802 kitwasmy computer training course. I then used that computer as the cross-development platform for another computer that I designed and built from scratch - including the operating system.QuotePerhaps he just isn't interested in going down to that level. But if he did, what would be wrong with that? Plenty of people have successfully built computers out of individual transistors, and a few have even made their own semiconductors. When I was learning electronics I made my own capacitors and resistors. It may not be productive, but learning this low level stuff gives you an understanding that you don't get by just using commercial parts.QuotePerhaps he is just dreaming, or perhaps he is a genius whocanlearn without being in contact with qualified teachers. I did, even though I only have an IQ of 120. A true genius should have no trouble learning by themselves.QuoteI didn't go to university so I obviously don't know how to design anything, and I of course I never learntanythingfrom the Internet.QuoteAnd come out knowing nothing but what that university taught you? No thanks. Going to university may improve your work ethic, but it isn't the only way to gain knowledge and skill.Instead of going to university I became an electronics technician, because I wanted to learnpracticalskills in the workplace. I was showing engineers where their designs had gone wrong while I was still a trainee!QuoteI think it's nonsense. There is more than enough information on the Internet about operating systems, compilers, filesystems etc. for anyone with a bit of intelligence and drive to learn it without going to university. If that had been available when I started out it would have accelerated my skills enormously.

author: legacy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 18, 2016, 09:24:48 am
content: Quote from: retrolefty on February 18, 2016, 01:37:11 amat the beginning, just to help them, but apparently, according with their theories, it seems one should be forced to provide them consultancy for free, and just to demonstrate that universities are not pointless, so I'd rather learn the Chinese grammar for the next occasionI opened this topic because curious about the opinion about universities and learning process, EEVBlog always offers good pointsQuote from: Bruce Abbott on February 18, 2016, 03:06:33 amI say yes, it's different by several order of magnitude in the complexity it involves, e.g. MMU, Enforced InOrder I/O, delayed slot, pipeline, hazards, cop races, etc, and many more headache pills

author: legacy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 18, 2016, 09:38:01 am
content: Quote from: Bruce Abbott on February 18, 2016, 03:06:33 amI think, you are talking about "singularities", which sounds like the "Good Will Hunting" movie (1997), by Gus Van Sant, starring Matt Damon

author: Rerouter
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 18, 2016, 09:48:37 am
content: hamster, many 10's of megabytes depending on how you approach it, If your after following the exact same operational timings and op code complete, including undocumented ones that some games or security software use, it gets much more complex, this is considered feature complete hardware emulation, that generally requires reverse engineering chunks of the original hardwareIf you only want to emulate the user layer, the hardware handlers and other things related to keep the user software happy, and your less concerned if things are a little faster or slower, it can drop down into single digits of MB, as your software would become an interpreter, taking the desired op codes of the compiled program, translating them, then returning the result,

author: legacy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 18, 2016, 09:56:32 am
content: Quote from: hamster_nz on February 18, 2016, 02:34:42 amI would reply: "sure, with Arduino you can, you just need to buy my kit"it could be a business success(kidding)

author: hamster_nz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 18, 2016, 10:12:38 am
content: Quote from: legacy on February 18, 2016, 09:56:32 amYou can't give a sensible reply to the point that your posts have become a parody of those you complain about - all talk, no substance, filled with wild delusions. If I didn't think that you are just a troll I would be sure you are actually suffering from the Dunning Kruger effect.Oh, and BTW that 8086 PC emulator was written in 760 lines of C, running on a (Raspberry Pi and others). Have a look at one of those horrid internet code repositories if you can lower yourself to it -https://github.com/adriancable/8086tiny- It is quite an interesting project. It might even had started with post that read "I'm going to write an PC XT emulator... anybody got any hints" posts that you hate so much.

author: legacy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 18, 2016, 10:24:59 am
content: Quote from: hamster_nz on February 18, 2016, 10:12:38 amsure, I can: you say "parody" I add "no doubt", "but with humor", just to make thinks "funny" instead of "worrying" "boring", and I can understand that you might dislike my dry sarcasm.

author: dmills
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 18, 2016, 10:27:10 am
content: Nobody sane discounts university education, but to claim it is the only (or even always the best) way to get a particular set of skills (Apart from skills in playing the academic game) is stretching it.I built a NUMA box based on the 68K dead bug style on a wooden board, while still in high school, including writing the fourth based environment in assembler from scratch (And then converting it to hex by hand!), and I had read the Dragon Book and implemented a compiler before ever attending higher education ("Compiler design, principles, techniques and tools", it is excellent), also such things as "register allocation in optimising compilers".Would learning that stuff have been faster with someone expert teaching it? Of course, I wasted much time down blind alleys (NMOS teaches you about signal integrity the first time you try to dead bug a DRAM bank, much swearing), and it took me a long time to really understand the maths behind things like the Laplace transform, which University would have helped with (In fact control theory still sends me to the books when a second order ODE appears upon occasion), but it is not the ONLY way to get there.I would however argue that going down those blind alleys has a value in itself, you often end up exploring that place where the electronics meets the physics, and quite often I would spend a week or two exploring exactly WHY something did NOT work as I had expected, not something most courses have time for, I learned EM theory when I had an interference problem for example.Mind you, I was the guy who used to bunk off school to go to the library or to hang out with the engineering team at the local broadcast site, with a nod and a wink from my parents.I never did finish my degree, someone offered me a rock and roll tour at the end of the first year, and it looked very much more interesting... 20 Years later I am working designing electronics, it has not been a problem.Regards, Dan.

author: westfw
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 19, 2016, 10:04:27 am
content: heh. "Most radically new software ideas were implemented by people who did not learn about those ideas in college/university." By the definition of "radically new", of course.On the flip side, we see an awful lot of "concept presented as "radically new" was in fact a re-invention of mainframe concept from the 70s."

author: legacy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 19, 2016, 11:29:33 am
content: 70s and 80s mainframes in pills, it was "Computer Architecture" book, by Hennessy & David Pattersonlike my sentimental longing affection for the past, for period and place with happy personal associationsErasmus, 2006, Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford

author: donotdespisethesnake
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 20, 2016, 11:16:28 am
content: Quote from: legacy on February 19, 2016, 11:29:33 amMaybe you are naturally incoherent, but it certainly appears that you took too many pills...

author: legacy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 20, 2016, 12:30:04 pm
content: Quote from: donotdespisethesnake on February 20, 2016, 11:16:28 am"70s and 80s mainframes in pills" was the title written on the book-notes we used inside the campus, just a few pages with pictures and brief description as integration to the book byHennessy&David Pattersonwhich was used for MIPS courses and reported above just for nostalgia.

author: Bruce Abbott
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 20, 2016, 02:37:20 pm
content: Quote from: legacy on February 20, 2016, 12:30:04 pmCultural reference failure.

author: legacy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 20, 2016, 05:36:17 pm
content: Quote from: Bruce Abbott on February 20, 2016, 02:37:20 pmkernel crashes and core dump, attempting to debug it the topic is now "What pills were common in the 60s, 70s and 80s?"

author: captbill
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: February 20, 2016, 06:54:44 pm
content: Quote from: legacy on February 17, 2016, 01:00:53 pmI can't argue with the benefits of a more structured approach that University provides. Especially if you find a Professor that, on the first day, has you building a CPU in the morning (literally compile from scratch your RISC5 processor and install to an FPGA), late morning you are working on your first graphics application, and after lunch you are installing PICL (PIC language) as your perfectly WORKING "minimalist, one pass compiler" for the PIC16c84. This is the perfect chip due to the very low instruction count it has. You already have a bi-direction serial com figured out. By evening you have fabricated a programmer and, quite possibly, have a PIC driving stepper motors, as only one example.After all that, the only subject I see left out is interrupts in this little "coarse"...Probably because that will be your homework assignment.https://www.inf.ethz.ch/personal/wirth/PICL/PIC.pdfThe complete PICL language is described in the two files PICL.Mod(linker) and PICS.Mod(scanner):https://www.inf.ethz.ch/personal/wirth/PICL/index.html