The Art of Electronics

Hello Ed,

Why on earth wouldn't you want the newest edition? It is worth every penny.

Regards, Joerg

Hi

I have a chance to purchase a used first edition at a very attractive price - thought I would simply find out what the major topic differences might be. From your comment, it appears that the book is every bit the "bible" that most folks claim it is.

Thanks for the reply.

Regards Ed

very

and

penny.

Ed Laughery scrobe on the papyrus:

Win has been promising us a new edition for some time now. Might be worth waiting.

"John B" a écrit dans le message de news: snipped-for-privacy@individual.net...

Nope. The wise way would be to buy this dirt cheap first edition and read it. Then realize how beneficial it'd be to read the second edition, buy and read it. Then he'll be just as all of us, waiting for the 3rd edition. And while waiting he'll a happy man with the previous editions for reference.

That depends on what you want to get from reading the book. AoE just doesn't go deep enough into the details to actually get a design done. It may help point you in the right direction to solve a problem.

Knowing the territory is the key to finding the solution though. AOE is an excellent 'overview' book. To be complete, it'd really need to be at least 100 times the size I expect.

I do wonder what would happen if AoE 2 + notes was put up as a wiki.

No single reference can do that. The tutorial topic presentations are of sufficient scope and quality for purposes of review and launching the reader into developing a more detailed understanding of the specialized literature and pertinent datasheets for any particular application. The specialized literature is where the user is most likely to find or develop a specific solution to the application requirements, unless those requirements are trivial, in which case the many circuit tidbits in the book will suffice. If you don't know how to think analytically or conduct research, you will miss 90% of the content of the book, but then again most newbies are amply served by 10% of the content and will develop more comprehension with time. AoE is infinitely better than the "demystified" garbage because it introduces the reader to the real world which they might as well get used to from the beginning; everyone has to start somewhere. AoE is also infinitely better than university laboratory instruction as most of that waste of time is taught by inexperienced and incompetent academic idiots.

The problem is identifying those aspects of the practice that are likely to endure the expected lifetime of the edition. It would be pointless to waste time and money producing a huge volume with tons of detailed circuit descriptions likely to become obsolete in short order.

depending on how old you are.

John

John Larkin scrobe on the papyrus:

Well, I'm nearly 59, retired for six months and in reasonably good health (that may be important). Do you think I can afford to wait, or should I just stick with my copy of the first edition? I guess it really depends on who pops their clogs first, me or Win!!!

This is an amazing idea! Is there any takers? I mean even I would contribute with what little knowledge I have...

Terry

Well, I could do this, but I have the suspicion that some regular posters may object :)

A wiki 'from scratch' takes a hell of a lot longer to get started - if it does at all, than one that starts from some framework.

AoE would be an ideal starting framework for an electronics wiki - but it's unlikely to happen for a number of reasons I suspect.

I'd really like to see something out there in keeping with the spirit of the AoE book. There's much in the way of information and 'tutorials' already available but mostly it's clonework and essentially worthless. Would seem though that AoE differentiates itself from all other textbooks, in that the authors have the experience and courage! to point out numerous examples of what they see as elegant design and clever technique. Y'know ... stuff used by real designers in real products. I'd suggest it'd be phenominally difficult in a Wiki to maintain that level of dedication and single mindedness of purpose . Anyways, can't happen as Win'd lose his raison d'etre :-) john

Part of that is the starting base. Most people will only add content of a similar quality.

Unfortunately the problem is the remaining 1%.

If my copy of AoE was a wiki. I'd have added some bits, if only for my own use. Mainly updating tables.

That's another way of putting what I already typed :-)

I feel the AoE is a good starting foundation text.

It was designed to take people from an entrance level, show them around the basics then it is up to the newly-confident reader to go exploring on their own.

To do that alone, it is a large book. And therefore not cheap. "And worth every frickin' cent!" I might add before the authors do.

Expanding it might well turn it into a huge set of encyclopaedias that nobody can carry out of the shop in one go or afford to buy.

Now the internet is here, they can google for anything, though of course the quality is rather varied. But having read the AoE, people can apply their own judgement in sifting out good circuits from bad.

It's more that that in that it also shows people more advanced techniques, even if it necessarily glosses over a few of the mathematical details at times. As I seem to recall, it was initially written from class notes that were taught in a physics department, where the emphasis was on transferring enough knowledge to get people building real, useful instrumentation. Compare that course of development to the standard EE curriculum, which emphasizes the ability to analyze pretty much any circuit in great detail, but has much more limited emphasis on synthesis as it applies to the real world. (The EE synthesis emphasis seems to be largely in areas where there are "nice" results available, such as filter design... but with, e.g., Butterworth, Chebyshev, etc. rather than "weird" hybrid combinations like AoE tends to advocate.) A standard EE curriculum doesn't include in-depth discussions of capacitor types, construction techniques (including those for high-frequency design), tables of "blue-chip" op-amps, etc.

Good point. There actually aren't that many Internet electronics web sites that are "tutorial" in nature, since of course producing one is a very large time commitment; instead, though, you find *many* "circuits" collections, and their quality is all over the board.

I think they (Win and Mr. Horowitz) should do something like the guy who wrote "Thinking in C++" - the book is downloadable for free, but they charge you for the answers to the exercises. :-)

Cheers! Rich

There is a teacher's answer book authored by Horowitz. I bought a copy.

...Jim Thompson

One of my best buddies in the service got married and had a kid. I visited him and his wife, when the kid was about 3 or so - it was a girl, and they were very conscientious with her sex education - she already knew "penis", but the word they taught her for female genitalia was "Wiki". (or maybe they spelled it "wickie")

Thanks! Rich