NOTE: this message includes ASCII art, you may want to view this 
message with a
font like courier new or similar.

I wish it were all strictly logic as you describe.  While a lot of the
microcontroler world can be dealt mostly with just logic, you'd still have to
know the basics for things like decoupling caps, or the caps you need to use
with a crystal, and more complicated things like crossover talk in parallel
cables.

You don't really have to know physics to do EE, but it sure does help, a lot.

A lot of those chips/modules you talk about still have datasheets with
specifications of input/output loads and a miriad of other things you may have
to pay attention to, and without knowing the basics you'll always run into
trouble here and there.

Even in the strictly logic world there are problems too.  Check this out:

           -->-->-------------- output a
           |
input ----+
           |
           -->-->-->-->-->-->-- output b


In the above each of the ">" is a simple inverter gate and if the input 
is low,
the output will be low, if the input is high, the output will be high.  
But the
input change appears at output b much later than at output a.  There are a few
reasons for this, but mostly due to the fact that it takes a little bit 
of time
for each of those gates to do it's work. Again, this is part of the basics.

By the way, I'm pretty bad at designing analog circuits (my EE is all 
hobby, no
schooling in it) as I only read enough about it to get by with the 
other stuff,
but if nothing else, knowing just enough to get buy does make a huge 
difference
when you need to ask a question and understand the answers receive.

Good luck.


-Mario




Quoting Joshua Shriver <jshriver@gmail.com>:

> Greetings again,
>
>       A while back several people gave me some good recommendations
> for books to start out in EE.  Thought I'd restate my request with an
> alteration in meaning.
>
> I'm a computer programmer, and while I respect EE, at it's purest form
> it's really not for me. I have some nifty ideas for devices I would
> like to implement, but since I lack the EE knowledge to do so, thought
> I'd try and get a basic understanding of EE.
>
> If everything had to be done with transistors, resistors and various
> other low-level parts I'd probably not have started. What makes me
> interested in EE from a programmer point of view is that today we have
> a lot of nice hardware that abstracts the lower level "physical" layer
> of EE.  Pics being a good point.
>
> As I browse Circuit Cellar or websites, I see a lot of nifty little
> components that do specific things. Like a chip that is a self
> contained wifi container, a single chip GPS container, etc, etc.
>
> So where I'm learning toward is learning just enough so I can buy
> these kind of containers/chips/IC's and use them just as I would in a
> program.  From a logic point of view they are the same thing as a
> function/procedure/object.  It takes in input and gives an output.
>
> Just with EE, you have more things to take into consideration.
> Functions don't care about power usage in fear of frying the component
> the in's and out's are defined.
>
> So I'm wondering am I out of luck, or do I really have to spend the
> time learning everything from the principles of physics to programming
> a PIC/FPGA/etc, or is there a quicker "if you just want to know how to
> connect various things together and make them work".  Besides it seems
> most of these components use a serial interface, and not sure how an
> i/o line works exactly. Is that the same thing as a parallel/serial
> ports data pin for i/o?
>
> Thanks for listening,
> Josh
> --
> http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive
> View/change your membership options at
> http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist
>
>



----------------------------------------------------------------
This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program.



-- 
http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive
View/change your membership options at
http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist