I had a great program in EE, studied a wide variety of stuff, and came away wishing I'd studied more about microcontrollers. At the time, they were considered "beneath" consideration by a Learned University. Phooey. I learned more, however, about electronics as a hobbyist and in a practical 2 year high school electronics course, frankly. Oh, sure, i got the calculus and the physics behind all those electronic parts at the University, and got those basics courses that taught me everything that I use Spice for these days, I analyzed complex networks and transmission lines and power systems. However, I have never been paid to do any of those things. Oh yeah, I got a handy piece of paper that says I know something. Everything I do in my job today comes from knowledge I gained from self-study, and most of it through hobby electronics. Whether you take CE or EE matters little. It's your "homework" that matters a lot. For instance: 1. Build a barely legal 1/4 watt FM transmitter, hook it up to your audio system and transmit to everybody in your Dorm. They get a big kick out of it and you discover RF. 2. Build a robot, any robot. 3. Never buy a DC power supply. Build them from scratch. Make each one more precise than the last. 4. Make anything with a PIC, stick a PIC and a coin battery and an LED behind your ear on Halloween, make a PIC into a practical joke and leave it in your roomate's bed to squawk like a duck when he pulls back the covers, etc. etc. 5. Make anything with any other microcontroller 6. Volunteer as an engineer at a community or campus radio station, fix their transmitter and their CD player, have soldering iron will travel. And so on. Having done these things, and adding a sheepskin to the lot, will take you farther than a degree by itself. -- Lawrence Lile Wouter van Ooijen Sent by: pic microcontroller discussion list 09/24/2003 02:08 AM Please respond to pic microcontroller discussion list To: PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU cc: Subject: Re: [OT]: CE or EE? > I'm not trying to > knock them or > anything, the simple fact is almost every CE I know is almost > purely into > software. While they DO know a LITTLE about hardware most > don't care about > it. Not wanting to knock the other side, but as far as I am concerned most EE are *not* into serious software. Oh, they can write a real time-program af a few k's of instructions, but I know none that could write real program like a compiler or an OS or a transaction-based database system or any other program that requires let's say a few man-years to build. If you did not smell the smiley here is an explicit one: ;) In my experience (in NL) CE and EE courses have a lot of overlap, diverging only in the later years. CE has more programming theory (how many EE's can explain the halting problem, godels theorem or the difference between P and NP problems?), more about programming-in-the-large, and you might even learn another language beside C. EE has more electrical theory, networks (not the Tanebaum's type), and maybe you'll learn that not all electronics is digital and voltages above 5.0 do exists and can even be used. And you might actually see an electronics circuit, or even hold an iron in your hand (take care to fetch the correct side). When I studied the EE faculty even offered a course that covered welding and other basic construction techniques, which I enjoyed (I did CE, but you were allowed to do courses from other faculties). I heard that it has been cancelled due to lack of interest :( If you have a broad interest is does not matter much which side you choose, you will fill up the gaps later. It might even be wise to choose against your preference. And the real experience (in electronics or computer programming) will come later. Wouter van Ooijen -- ------------------------------------------- Van Ooijen Technische Informatica: www.voti.nl consultancy, development, PICmicro products -- http://www.piclist.com hint: PICList Posts must start with ONE topic: [PIC]:,[SX]:,[AVR]: ->uP ONLY! [EE]:,[OT]: ->Other [BUY]:,[AD]: ->Ads -- http://www.piclist.com hint: PICList Posts must start with ONE topic: [PIC]:,[SX]:,[AVR]: ->uP ONLY! [EE]:,[OT]: ->Other [BUY]:,[AD]: ->Ads