OBSERVATION: Electronics vs Software hobbyists - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: SL4P
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 28, 2023, 12:32:55 am
content: Does anyone else here notice that electronics hobbyists generally have a better grasp of the subject and language than ‘coding hobbyists ?80% of the time communicate with better structure, grammar and focus on the questions.EE guys get about 90% of the subject in the first post, while software guys seem to miss at least 30% of the detail in the initial post.Just my thoughts.

author: RJSV
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 28, 2023, 02:51:03 am
content: First thing came to mind, reading your question:There I was, year 1984, a young EE, typing on my Commodore64, coding away (with a smile)."Gosh,", I was thinking; " This thing runs assembly language code that manipulates the hardware at (almost) ONE MEGA-HERTZ !!!As a mostly hardware guy, I was thinking:"That's like...Radio frequency fast !!!"

author: pqass
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 28, 2023, 05:36:40 am
content: That's us software guys.... release early, release often.

author: magic
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 28, 2023, 08:20:50 am
content: I don't know, there are some really weird questions asked about electronics too...Like that guy trying to build amplifiers out of capacitors only and crying like a typical software industry SJW when people "invalidated" him by suggesting it can't possibly work"You guys are trying to appear cool by putting me down, aren't you?"(edit: maybe he was a software dev venturing into electronics as a hobby)And there are rumors that professional British power supply industry is not in a great shape either

author: ebastler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 28, 2023, 01:10:05 pm
content: Quote from: SL4P on December 28, 2023, 12:32:55 amI think it's age-related.Seriously though: EE hobbyists are older on average; a larger share of them is from a generation which grew up without smartphones, with their hastily typed messages full of acronyms and spelling errors. And also a generation where spelling was probably more relevant in the syllabus while they went to school.

author: thm_w
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 28, 2023, 10:49:36 pm
content: Quote from: ebastler on December 28, 2023, 01:10:05 pmYes, age and experience in other areas. How many young electronics hobbyists do you know of? Very few. Meanwhile, its now common practice to learn coding in elementary school.There is probably some personality self selection in there as well, mechanical and electrical engineering is generally going to take longer before seeing a result. Software, you can get a result right away (as mentioned above, release early).

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 28, 2023, 11:42:48 pm
content: Agree with both points. Age of course (on average), and the mindstate. Hardware design, even relatively simple stuff, requires a lot more patience to get any "rewarding" result.Now, it can be the case for software as well for sure, but there are many ways of getting fast results these days with software. So whether this selects people, or shapes their mind (probably a bit of both), there's likely a consequence.

author: RJSV
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 29, 2023, 12:20:22 am
content: A. Complete DorkAs a young, buddinga EE Dork, I remember 4th grade; Carrying the big sized 1.5 hobby battery walking to school, couple times.So maybe some of us IDENTIFY as 'Dork, complete with battery'.Neither (purely EE), nor complete software geek.

author: Benta
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 29, 2023, 12:36:12 am
content: I think it's more related to the fact that the entry level for programming is much lower than for electronics.For programming, a crashed program is like "so what?"Plus, the immediate reward of writing "Hello World" on a screen gets dopamine flowing and brings a feeling of being an Expert Programmer.For electronics, it costs money (burned components, wrecked PCB etc.) which leads to more planning and contemplation before action. It's real manual work, not just tapping a keyboard.That being said, I see no quality difference betweenprofessionalSWE and EE postings.The age issue becomes more apparent when you look at spelling, punctuation and capitalization, I attribute that to smartphones and odd autocorrects. Sitting in a bar and posting technical questions is apparently the norm today. Who cares if it's understandable? Important is: "Hey, I'm on the Interwebs!"Signed: "Grumpy Old Man."

author: RJSV
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 29, 2023, 12:44:40 am
content: Actually, now that I think more about the two avenues in professional lives, for a couple dozen years it came to be Software dept.s dominated by Women, while the deep hardware dept.s were exclusively male dominated.Maybe that's because, as the 1970's progressed, many women had already been successful in Mathematics and Statistical pursuits.

author: baldurn
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: December 29, 2023, 01:17:16 am
content: 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.

author: floobydust
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 29, 2023, 03:45:43 am
content: 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?It's possible the professional British power supply industry hires self-proclaimed "experts". What could possible go wrong?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.

author: thm_w
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 29, 2023, 11:53:10 pm
content: Quote from: floobydust on December 29, 2023, 03:45:43 amI 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.

author: HalFET
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 31, 2023, 10:02:23 am
content: Quote from: floobydust on December 29, 2023, 03:45:43 amI 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 amWhich 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.