ageing out of tech

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics
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John Larkin
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    - Win
Reply to
Winfield Hill

LOL- Decrepitude is an end phase of life? Nice way of putting it. Guess, Alzheimer's or death pulls them out their funk.

Reply to
bloggs.fredbloggs.fred

I didn't know being an engineer in my 30's was something to feel bad about. I'm glad to see there is someone willing to take $5k from me to let me cry about it. man oh man... what does NYT charge to publish stuff like this

Reply to
sea moss

Well, google pays these kids outrageously.

This is fun too:

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Just what we need, a few thousand new millionaires who can't cook or drive or fix a faucet and want to live within bicycle range of SOMA. This is an insane town in lots of ways, but it is fun to be here in the middle of it.

Tech keeps changing and burns (or buys!) people out as they age. I wonder if hardware or software fries people quicker.

You and I seem to stay interested in parts and circuits. Probably either of us could retire and golf or something. Engineering has an anchor in fundamentals that software doesn't, so we have a stabilizing foundation.

Some old guys never made the transition from tubes to transistors. I like new toys.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics
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John Larkin

on-valley-ageism.html

The interesting thing about electronics is that it is like economics - you can keep on recycling the same old exam papers because the answers keep on changing.

I've revisited much the same problems several times during my career, and t he right way to solve them kept on changing as new components kept on showi ng up.

It didn't seem to burn out anybody I knew.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney
Reply to
bill.sloman

on-valley-ageism.html

I consider myself an RF/radio engineer. About 10 years ago I came to the s obering realization that if I do not understand DSP in a fairly deep way th at I am just fooling myself about being a radio engineer (in a professional sense). I have spent 10 years learning DSP even though I only occasionall y get to really apply it (for example loading a modulation waveform into an RF signal generator with arbitrary modulation)

Reply to
blocher

DSP is just a variation of Signals and Systems, which is basically the same in any technology. You can look at a filter in the time domain or the frequancy domain or the s-plane, but it's really the same.

I'm a fan of implementing IIR filters in uPs or FPGAs, to directly copy/model an analog filter out of Williams or Lancaster. That has been known to annoy some people.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics
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Reply to
John Larkin

Yeah, I'm annoyed, don't know if that's the reason why.

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    - Win
Reply to
Winfield Hill

licon-valley-ageism.html

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e sobering realization that if I do not understand DSP in a fairly deep way that I am just fooling myself about being a radio engineer (in a professio nal sense). I have spent 10 years learning DSP even though I only occasion ally get to really apply it (for example loading a modulation waveform into an RF signal generator with arbitrary modulation)

You are trivializing DSP. It is not "just" a variation of signals and syst ems. It is damn hard. Aliasing, leakage, windowing, I/Q modulation, maste ry of complex numbers. These are mostly notions that are unique to DSP (not e emphasis on "mastery" of complex numbers).

Reply to
blocher

Complex numbers aren't unique to DSP. People did quadrature modulation and detection with tubes. We learned how to do complex math in high school. Complex math isn't actually very complex.

We are about to get the first PC board for a quadrature I/Q modulator box, which will be used to simulate a jet engine blade-tip detector. It's all analog. I let my newest engineer do it as his first professional design. We could have done it digitally, but that would have been a lot more work.

We talked about that here a little. We wound up using a cool opamp-based all-pass 90 degree phase shifter that works over something like an 80:1 frequency range.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics
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John Larkin

It annoys people even more when I do non-standard filter forms with just adds and subs and right-shifts. It was expensive to do multiplies on older-generation uPs and FPGAs.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics
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John Larkin

I've looked through this thread and seen all the follow-ups from those here who aren't in my KF, but can't find which "DSP" is under discussion here. Are we talking about digital signal processing? I can't think of another acronym that fits. Anyway, if we are, I'm happy to confess my total ignorance of the subject, too. I would love to know how it deals with issues such as selectivity and filtering with no physical reactive components, but electronics like most sciences/arts is such a huge field nowadays I'm guessing parochial specialisation is the only way a techie can ever hope to make their mark in this increasingly complex world.

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Reply to
Cursitor Doom

and now it basically comes for free with uP having single cycle multiply an d accumulate and FPGAs DSP slices

Reply to
Lasse Langwadt Christensen

Just so, but that doesn't negate Blocher's point.

I well remember in "high" school reminding our maths teacher two weeks before the external exam that we hadn't been taught complex numbers yet. "Oh oh", was his response, followed by

3 hours on the subject.

But he was a good teacher, having taught us differentiation from first principles in 3 hours, ditto integration in another

3 hours. That was when we were 14, and was only for polynomials except 1/x. Transcendentals waited until we were 15.
Reply to
Tom Gardner

Er, don't you realise that analysis of reactive components is intimately tied up with complex numbers.

If you can understand reactive components, you have to be able to understand complex numbers. From there it is a small step to a /basic/ understanding of using complex numbers in DSP.

Reply to
Tom Gardner

Not like the one in our book, page 456, that works over a 150:1 range?

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 Thanks, 
    - Win
Reply to
Winfield Hill

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the sobering realization that if I do not understand DSP in a fairly deep way that I am just fooling myself about being a radio engineer (in a profes sional sense). I have spent 10 years learning DSP even though I only occas ionally get to really apply it (for example loading a modulation waveform i nto an RF signal generator with arbitrary modulation)

ystems. It is damn hard. Aliasing, leakage, windowing, I/Q modulation, ma stery of complex numbers. These are mostly notions that are unique to DSP ( note emphasis on "mastery" of complex numbers).

It seems that every response you make is along the lines of....That is real ly easy. I already knew that in high school. Perhaps you did and your suc cessful business is a testament to your skills, but I really do wonder how a high schooler could have any real idea about complex numbers when their w hole beauty does not really come to light until you do ODE's.

Regarding complex numbers being used in hardware, that is true for SSB tran smitters and receivers, but unless if you were pushed into SSB radio you pr obably did not master it, whereas almost all DSP applications today require the mastery of I/Q etc.

Reply to
blocher

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It is not a small step. Complex numbers are all about rotation and all of the implications of e^iwt = coswt +isinwt. Using complex numbers in a tr ansfer function for reactive components is just applying (but not necessari ly understanding) how inductors and capacitors vary their response over fre quency. It only applies in the frequency domain and it is also a result of the fact that the solution to am ODE that contains a forcing function is t he same forcing function. and if the forcing function is a sin wave then the solution to the ODE is the same sin wave with a phase shift and amplitu de shift. I knew how to apply complex number theory to a reactive circuit before I understood any of the ODE theory behind it. And understanding ODE 's just gets you started on complex numbers.

Reply to
blocher

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f the implications of e^iwt = coswt +isinwt. Using complex numbers in a transfer function for reactive components is just applying (but not necessa rily understanding) how inductors and capacitors vary their response over f requency. It only applies in the frequency domain and it is also a result of the fact that the solution to am ODE that contains a forcing function is the same forcing function. and if the forcing function is a sin wave the n the solution to the ODE is the same sin wave with a phase shift and ampli tude shift. I knew how to apply complex number theory to a reactive circui t before I understood any of the ODE theory behind it. And understanding O DE's just gets you started on complex numbers.

To follow up on these posts of mine.... The underlying point of this thread is that older people get left behind. I have lived that fear personally f or the last 10 or 15 years. I have read books and watched videos online to stay relevent. And yet the attitude here seems to be... oh that is easy.. .I knew everything since I was 15 years old. Don't you realize that the "I am brilliant" folks are the ones who get RIFFED? The ones who already hav e arrived and have nothing left to learn because they knew it all at age 15 are the very ones that should get their asses laid off? I am currently watching videos on linear algebra because I never really und erstood it. I know, most here will say how they comprehended linear algebr a at age 16 (because they are so damn smart). I want to use MATLAB. Matla b stands for Matrix algebra. If you do not really understand linear algebr a then how can you be a master of matlab?

There is one thing I do excel at. When I do not know something , I am very aware of the fact that I do not know it.

Reply to
blocher

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