In 1975, I told my scout leader I was interested in Electronics, he gave me a 1974 Signetics Digital Linear MOS Data Data Book (One of the most beautiful Data books of it's time). I carried that book everywhere and taught myself digital electronics design. That Signetics Data Book was the start of a long career in electronics engineering . I'm now 60 and retired, but still have that Signetics data book in my library.

60 years ago I started electronics with the "just let's do it" philosophy. That led to a fun and rewarding 47 year career as an electronics engineer.

Curiosity is what makes you achieve this, not your degree. Congratulation, Sir.

I was a Computer Engineering major in college. The thing I liked best about my EE classes was the total lack of memorization. It was all about developing certain ways of thinking about things and processes for analyzing them.

I can still remember what made me fall in love with electronics as a kid. Looking through the holes in the wooden fibre board on the back of a twin cassette tape with record player on the top. Seeing all the components on brown pcb and thinking it looks like a mini city hidden in darkness. Good Times

I have an EE degree, and what you learn in school, is mostly theory, on how circuits work. Very little is taught on circuit design itself. Some in digital electronics, but less in analog circuitry. Most of what I learned is self taught. As far a math goes, in engineering school, they do go into the derivations. But what's really important, is the concepts behind the math. Knowing the math concepts can often help you design a simpler circuit. For example, the "sampling theory", which is the SAME as side band modulation, mathematically. Lots of harmonics generated, but if generate a perfect square wave (exact 50% duty cycle), you'll see that all the even harmonics disappear. Only odd harmonics. One of my old bosses, used this to create a simple tape erase system, that REQUIRED a sine wave. He just used a simple flip-flop stage, that made a perfect 50% square wave, that he fed directly in the erase head, as the inductor, and a cap so it would resonate roughly near the square wave. That combine provided enough filtering to get a perfect sinewave, because the 3rd harmonic amplitude was small enough to not be worried about. The competition, used an overly complex multistage multiorder op-amp filter. Both worked the same, but our was cheaper and more reliable.

This video explains my outlook on life/learning very well. The older I have got the more I have realized you can learn anything just by putting your genuine attention and curiosity into it. You said "you don't worry about the stuff until you need it then become an expert on it". I learned programming as a high schooler just from wanting to create stuff and I became good enough at it to secure a full time job in it. 3 years ago I purchased a corvette and now I am a pretty great mechanic just out of interest and necessity. You just have to go into stuff with the mindset of "I can do this" and you'll get there. I'm painting my car next week lol I've never painted a car before and most people will tell me that it's gonna turn out bad if I don't spend $5000 but you just gotta not listen to that and go for it. I'll just keep this outlook for the rest of my life because I love the freedom it gives me

Enjoyed this presentation, no hype, no music, just pure down to earth chatter, many thanks even though I couldn’t grasp some of it.

This style of video is quality. No music and it gives you a first person view of learning something that a lot of people might think is more difficult than it needs to be.

I think this is brilliant. I learned electronic circuits in the early 90’s on a polytechnical school. At the end I received a diploma and was able to calculate voltage dividers, coil hysterisys curves, ntsc and pal vectors… but I had no clou how to build things. Because we had not learned how to bring this in practise. We had no youtube back then. Just our teachers who learned their ways to us the way they had learned it from their teachers. After a few years I quit my repairjob (Most of the time I had no idea how to repair. Just switched components until I had the right component removed and replaced) and went into computersciences. That was the end of my electronics ambition. Now, after almost 30 years, I reenter the world of electronics because I’m missing the one thing in my life that really has my interest. Electronics. But instead of learning all the equations, I bought a multimeter, a power supply, an oscilloscope and a function generator and some components and started playing. Blew up a lot of things (my first led went with a real ‘bang’) and learned by doing. And I have the greatest time of my life. Sometimes I look up the math to start understanding how it is working and it all falls into place now. In stead of trying to memorizing the math, it now is more like understanding the situation and applying the math out of it. I think this video deserves way more likes and views and should be an inspiration to everyone. Thank you sir!

“Go do” is a great philosophy for gaining understanding and wisdom. I did EE a long time ago and, for a range of reasons, the “go do” philosophy did not feature in my undergraduate learning. “go do” is what you need to do to figure out the relationship between abstraction and reality. I salute your spirit of inquiry and investigation! Really enjoyed your vid!

I love your humility. I also have a degree in physics, grad degree as well. I work as “engineer” but there are so many things I simply don’t know but hungry to learn. This video was excellent. Thank you very much.

Mr electronics, respected dude, I am now 60 years old, and have done electronics since I was about 7 years old. (Simple experiments with radio) Nothing in this life is actually learned unless you learn it yourself. I did not go to school for the last 2 years of secondary school. This is because I am dyslexic and they did not help me. This is a good thing because it taught me how to teach myself. This is what they should teach people in the schools, colleges and universities IMHO

Subscribed. Love your take, really down to earth, learn it when you need it, don't need to understand everything at once, learn through play and let that be the motivator to dig deeper down the rabbit hole.

This was a very good presentation. I'm a 3rd year General (41 year old) and I'm just getting into electronics. The presentation was very encouraging. You'd be a very good Elmer.

When I was in high school, learning digital clock circuits; I overheated plenty of breaboards and 555 timer/leds for using the wrong wattage/value for the current limiting resistors. I started in electronics because I want to know how things work, my parents got tired of me taking stuff apart and sent me to a tech school to learn properly. been doing electronics repair and design ever since. best guess always work.... eventually.

Absolutely solid advice, I think when we normally want to learn about any subject, we tend to get intimidated and overwhelmed by math, theory, etc.. I appreciate your simplistic approach and think your video came out great!. Thanks!

This is gold! I have been interested and active in electronics since childhood. Every learning step was complicated math and deep theory..... almost never starting with basic concepts that build intuition.

Thank you for putting this out there. I have a mix of both school and road of hard knocks and got to say I’ve learned more just doing than I ever did in school. I’m not saying school is bad and there are some really great ones out there but for me the actual doing and seeing how things actually work in real life practical applications was key. Great message for basically anything anyone wants to learn. Go Do..

I like this perspective. A lot of people want to know how to get motivated to learn new things. I think your idea of just doing things is one answer. As you do things, you seem to find things that motivate you. It reminds me of the advice people give to artists: dont wait for inspiration to lead you to act. Instead, act, and let that lead you to inspiration.

Best video you’ve done so far 😉 The “learn it when you need it”, I’ve been saying that for years ! 👍🏻

Wonderful Video!!! I'm a Chief Engineer (aerospace), and took the challenge to resolve reliability issues of an electronic box (simillar to a Variable Freq Drive, but converts variable frequency to a fixed frequency). With only a high school level electronics education, I embarked on this challenge 40-years later....basically my own self-study; which I learned a TON of electronics and electrical knowledge, while helping to solve the relaibility issues. Again...Excellent Video!!!

Hey man thanks! I think the video has the exact amount of humbling knowledge you need to start a journey onto learning the unknown. It gave me guidance.

Outstanding advice! The world needs more mentors like you.

"Just go do" is great advice... Prototyping circuits is a great way to learn. Your video really demonstrated your point. You were questioning the success of the video towards the end, but don't second guess yourself, it was perfect.

I've been repairing electronics professionally for the last 10 years or so. It all started back when I was 6 or 7 years old, my dad picked me up an "electronics learning lab" kit from Radioshack. I'm pretty sure I still have that thing in a box somewhere. The kit was amazing! It was a big rectangle with all these knobs, switches, lights, connectors and meters, with a breadboard slapped in the middle. The kit came with a huge assortment of components and three books. Two of them were lab books (containing exercises to perform on the kit), and one was a book on how to actually read and interpret schematics. My dad and I would spend HOURS assembling different circuits out of those books. To this day, the _only_ reason I know how to even read schematics and make sense of them is because of what I learned in those books. I may not know the equations and the math for how a lot of that stuff works, but when it comes to repairing electronics, you don't need to know _why_ the designers specifically chose a 200uF 12v polymer capacitor to place in that particular spot of the circuit, you just need to have an idea of _what_ that circuit does, and what purpose that capacitor serves. Is it filtering? Is it decoupling? Is this particular circuit supposed to produce a necessary voltage to make something else in the device work? Is it maybe not working because this capacitor has a fault? Repair in specific is one of the coolest aspects of electronics work in my opinion. It combines so many different fields of work into one. PACE put out some amazing videos on rework and repair back in the 80's, and they described repairing electronics as being your very own process engineer. You have to find the fault, fix the problem, and restore the circuit back to as good as or equal to manufacturer specifications. You have to do all of this maybe without even knowing _exactly_ how the circuit works or the math and equations involved. I for example don't know the exact math behind the principles of a resonating circuit, or the exact breakdown of how PWM works, but I know what a boost and buck converter look like. I know _what_ they are supposed to do and roughly how they do it. I may not know _how_ filtering works and what that does to apparent and real power, and what the current over voltage waveform would look like, but I know that if one filtering cap out of a dozen is shorted, it's going to screw the whole rail and that voltage won't go where it's supposed to go.

You are doing a great job for the newcomers to build confidence in expanding their enthusiasm in learning electronics and also the knowledge

I love your explanation and teaching method. Curiosity is the key and don't be scared of tech. If you screw up, so long as you're playing with components which are very affordable you can afford to blow them up, and then hopefully that'll teach you why they blew up. Great work. Thank you for your videos.

I totally agree that getting that gut feel for a circuit makes all the difference. I've been in love with circuits my whole life---I'm 61 and still get excited by a new circuit. One thing I have found useful in understanding a circuit, is to look at the limiting cases, and the mid-line case. So, for the filters of this example. The limiting case would be opening up the capacitor (low frequencies) or shorting the capacitor (high frequencies.) Midline would be where the frequencies start rolling off, or the 3 db point. That is where the gain is half, so the value where the capacitive reactance equals the parallel (or series) resistor. I have found this can give a real insight, for me anyway, on the circuits operation, or where it can go off.

My story with practical electronics was back in 2003 with "Handbook of Switchmode Power Supplies", by Keith Billings, from McGraw-Hill publisher. I've really read that book from cover to cover many times, even slept with it. I wanted to design power converters, but learned through atx power supplies repair, from old PCs. My firs one I've ever touched blew up in front of my eyes, by my mistaken switch on 120V, but plugged into 230V outlet.

Brilliant on all counts! All I would add (though you did it with the op amp circuits) is have something to build, especially something you want to have - it must be simple at first. That will enable you to buy only the tools and components you need and then learn all the skills whilst building. How many of us started out with a wooden block (bread board) crystal set!

I’m a mechanical engineer under schooling but I work a lot with PCB’s so there’s an interest to learn some background there. This was a nice video to have randomly appear in my feed!

Learning this stuff now in college and oh boy did they throw us into the depend of all the math straight away. Watching this helped me reflect and remember my passion. THANKS!

I just picked up a book called beginners guide to reading schematics by stan gibilisco . It has helped me alot as being new to the electronics world. Hope it helps someone . I also agree that doing something is the best way to learn .

Honestly, this is the best approach to learning anything.

One of the woodwork teachers at my school subscribed to a magazine called everyday electronics. When he'd finished with them he left them in the school library where I spent my lunch break fascinated with the various projects you could make. I was learning guitar but couldn't afford effects pedals or amplifiers. So ended up making them. I've still got a 300watt mosfet amp that I made in 1989 that I gigged with for years and it still works. The world of electronics has changed so much since then and I might say in a good way with the ease of access to information such as that provided on this channel.

While my father helped get me started with the basics, I learned MOST of what I know much the same way as you - my first book was the handbook written by Bill Orr, W6SAI followed weeks later by the 1977 ARRL Handbook. Loved the Forrest Mims series of books sold by Radio Shack too!

I like it! A very good explanation. The practical side seems to often be missed because people see the math and then shy away, because they will "never be able to do the math". Thank you for sharing.

I love honesty. I am always learning and have some tiny “project” like recapping. Just subscribed.

Great video and an awesome reminder to just jump in and try. Your back story is very interesting and impressive -- most importantly impressive! You give hope to all of us autodidacts. Thanks for sharing!

Thanks for this video! Likewise I had a non-traditional path to becoming an engineer. Got interested in electronics in high school while playing with CB radio in the mid 70s and then discovered ham radio but didn't know any hams to get started. I did buy the ARRL handbook - 1977 edition - and started learning from that which gave me a jump start on later studies. Joined the Army in 1976 to get my college paid for and went through the Army satcom school to become a 26Y - satellite communications ground station equipment repairman. It was a year long school that took you from introductory basic electronics all the way to microwave and satellite communications concepts, and included also included repair of cryogenically cooled low noise amplifiers, heat exchangers for liquid cooled power amplifiers, and air conditioners. Took additional studies while in the service including a communications engineering correspondence course and some college math classes. Had every intent of going on to college after leaving the Army but the experience in satcom from the Army actually landed me a nice position with a commercial satellite communications company right out of the service. Hired on as a field engineer and was promoted to a junior engineer and then started moving through the ranks. Had many great mentors along the way and supplemented that with a lot of self studies and a class here and there. Eventually someone suggested I look into getting licensed as a Professional Engineer and I did some additional studying to do that. Thankfully I had participated in an apprentice program while in the service and had logs for all my experience, and that plus transcripts of other studies were enough to satisfy the board that I had met the equivalence of an ABET accredited engineering degree program and I was able to take and pass the EIT exam and then later the P.E. electrical engineer exam and become licensed. So, for anyone interested in learning electronics - if you're here watching IMSAI Guy it's a good guess you are - then I totally second picking up a copy of the ARRL Handbook and some other great publications that they have like the ARRL Antenna book, and digging in. Get a starter kit and just start playing around. Turns out the sky isn't the limit - you could communicate to satellites or beyond to another planet ;-)

Wow this video totally resonates in my soul! I totally agree with your ideas about learning subjects like Electronics. Learn the concepts first, the math LAST. Build, test play- always, real stuff is your best teacher- it never lies. Don't worry that you have gaps in your knowledge, fill them as you go - when you need to, it's 10X easier to learn something when it's for a real purpose, here and now. Browse 1000's of circuits, look for the recurring shapes and patterns, it's like leaning a language, the components are the letters, function blocks are the words, systems are the sentences.

Thank you very much for your sincere and honest advice, dear sir. Your good wishes are felt through your years of life, through your experience gained as an old man and the wisdom that came along with your elder hands. I felt your words in a hope of you for young people not to make avoidable mistakes if they humbly listen to words like yours. Thank you very much for that. I do keep your words with me. I know they are valuable and full of wisdom.

I am a senior in ECE and loved my circuit classes (Basic circuits, Circuit Theory, Electronic circuits and device electronics). I agree with your point about actually getting to play with the circuits. I didn't touch a resistor till my 3rd circuit class after we had an extensive background in the math, theory and design. But when we finally got to breadboarding it was so much fun and interesting to see them working.

For me, i got into this like i did with programming… I had a need.. Not job related or anything, but something at home i needed to fix and something i needed for various uses. Once you have that personal need, you will be more interested in seeing it through. Most people that have issues are just learning because of a job want or just curious. So for those people, all they can do are tutorials. Nice, but easy to give up when things get a little tough. So have a need that you can use in your daily life.. For me that was fixing kids toys and eventually enhancing them. You don’t need to start out building things from scratch. Just like programming where you can just download some code that will serve a function for you and then modify it to your likening or purpose.. You can use something simply thats not working and try to fix it. Usually kids toys fit that bill well. And make some kid happy at the same time .. Learn how different tweaks give you different results. For me, that process really sped things up and over tine you may encounter more complicated things that require more study. But that wont be so hard since now, you have a successful background going for you to build from and not start out cold turkey…. The key take away is to work on something you need, to learn from as it make the learning process more interesting and less likely for you to quit if things get a little tough. Also, when i was ready to start more advanced things… I started looking at power supplies. Anything that does AC to DC.. They are everywhere and will teach you A LOT.

True on the equation's ! I too started to learn electronics when I was 7. I'm now 76. At the age of 9, I started repairing my neighbors Radio & TV's. In 1975, I finally got my EE.

I admire you.please express your knowledge and teaching

Really enjoyed your lecture. Most Interesting and Simple. Great for students. Keep it up!

Great way to learn. I'm 6 months away from getting masters degree in EE and most of time I do what you do. Until you are interested or asked to do a project you don't need to know everything but you need to be welling spend the time to learn and explore.

Wow this video is much more than a video about learning electronics. It's a philosophical way towards learning. I'm glad I found it. ¡Gracias por compartir!

Fantastic video and your message is so, so important. Playing and tinkering around with electronics is the best way to learn , even when you burn out some components! "Just play with them", as you say is the way to learn and important for the younger generations to try it out.

Your way to learn it sounds perfect to me as a hobbyist. It's very practical and efficient. I will remember it when I get tempted to over complicate things in the future

Great video! The -3dB point is called the cutoff frequency. It's useful to know when making filters because at that point you have half the power than at 0dB.

Your advice for people wanting to learn electronics is great. It is exactly how many of us have learned. Myself included. I have three grown children. Oldest a Mechanical engineer, a daughter who is a speech pathologist, and my younger son has a degree in physics. Carl the youngest is working as an electrical engineer, and he bootstrapped himself in exactly the way you describe. It takes curiosity, and being tolerant with yourself. Everyone feels stupid on occasion - everyone. That will happen as you investigate - and that makes the breakthrough events much more sweet. [ their father is an electronics engineer and their mother a speech pathologist - funny how that happens ]

I was interested by your closing comment, "the video didn't quite turn out the way I really wanted it to". It was great. As a teacher, you passion for your subject is clear, and with little to no understanding myself of electronics, you provided inspiration and an honest view of investigating by experimentation and learning by trying it, mistakes and all. go do. Thanks

Thanks for posting this. Very helpful! I was a hobbyist first, got a Novice License around 1976 (WN8TER was my call sign) then I studied electronics in college, and have worked since then doing product design for companies as well as my own projects. You definitely learn more by doing than by reading and studying (although that helps too). I have several projects and book reviews posted and will be posting more this year. Thanks again!

As someone in IT, learning about the inner workings of electronics and computers has always been something I've been interested in learning. My interest in IT was not typical, most people did something as a kid that fascinated them about computers, I just grew up around computers because my dad was in IT when I was young and what he did fascinated me. I bet there's nothing like being able to easily tell why a motherboard failed or why the power switch in a GameBoy Color no longer works, it's so cool!

Just a hobbyist trying to learn some things about electronics, this was actually really helpful. Thank you.

Thank you for your transparency; much respect and I’m now invested even more than ever in your content; subbed…

Don't be put off by the math!! I didn't truly understand electronic theory until I took a trigonometry class and realized how easy it was to change a component value in the formula and watch the results change. With visual math these days, any math formula can be run on a computer and the results displayed on the screen....

Anyone else divorced here and starts coping with electronics ?

This is SUCH good advice! I learned electronics the same way you did and I really appreciate how much you can learn just by experimenting. Not learning the complicated stuff like the math before you need it is excellent advice, too. I haven't needed anything beyond algebra and trigonometry for anything I've done until I started wanting to understand digital signal processing algorithms, at which point my hobbyist-level knowledge hit a brick wall. But I can still understand DSP as a series of black boxes that perform a function, so I was able to do things like design an analog FM stereo radio in GNU Radio Companion. If you want to be an engineer, go for it! But if you just want an engaging hobby with unlimited room to grow, start building stuff and have fun!

Your video gives people a good starting point and lets them participate and learn. Excellent!

My favourite analogue book was written by Burr-Brown BB (now TI) approximately in the 70's.

Quick start guide: Do an electronics education to get the basics. Once you got all that, do more stuff at home, with the stuff you wanna learn.

Your attitude is amazing! Really enjoyed the style of video. 👌

Each thing you learn adds an arrow to your quiver

Perhaps do a video on the importance of phase shift in circuit design. You might be surprised. For audio work, phase shifts cause "bad bass waves", which cause, booming, muddy sound. Understanding preserving phase and correcting phase leads to better sound and verbal comprehension.

Yep, I've changed my attitude on learning a lot since I started teaching myself programming, electronics, and engineering. Physics teaches you how to approach a topic very rigorously from the ground up, and that's great for pure theory, but not so great when it comes to practical applications and just making a thing do a thing.

Not sure I joined the right step here but I do have to say, I love your attitude, philosophy and principles of education and experience 😂 I'm currently near the end of my engineering apprenticeship and I feel like the electronics was rushed and just a case of remember this, remember that (Just like you said.) I watch these videos out of pure interest and wanting to learn more. Thanks for this 👍

The link between a physical circuit and theory to the point of physics being realised is very interesting...the understanding of subtleties in the circuit and it's improvement are a real asset to understanding

Everything complex, is just made up of lots and lots and lots of simple things. I like to understand all the simple things, that way nothing scares me. If you wanted to design a 64-bit CPU from scratch, the best place to start is probably with a 2-bit CPU - totally useless as a computer, but one hell of a good place to start learning. Even just thinking about all the things you can not do with only 2-bits will help you learn.

I am very much a beginner. At this point I would have a lot of trouble building this circuit and getting my oscilloscope to read it. However, I get the point, and I love it! I’m inspired to get exploring. Thanks, fun video!

I watched this video second time, I was contemplating my life decisions,thanks you reminded me that I don't need a degree in electrical engineering to learn electronics, salute to your work

Great philosopy and mindset on practical learning on a need to know basis. Very efficient! Thanks

I draw parallel to software engineering where it’s nearly impossible to know/think/comprehend the whole software and hardware stack, and it’s not strictly necessary. You make some assumptions, simplifications and optimistically move along. However, it’s good to recheck your assumptions and how things might go wrong if you want to have something robust and not just proof of concept. Learn by doing but also spend time reading to bring yourself to the next level. Some high level ideas require thinking and not just experimenting. Just my 2 cents.

Great comments on learning electronics. I learnt electronics only after my undergrad EE degree, by fiddling around in an undergrad lab as a graduate TA. Currently pursuing a PhD in theoretical physics.

Hope you are doing great. If we had more people like you, we'd have less youngsters making excuses like "I'm bad at maths or science". I'm an engineer myself and you are inspiring me to try do some non-profit teaching, thanks

This is a very good video to introduce into the technique. You can convince several people with your videos. Keep it up. Very clearly explained, my respect

"You will learn it when you need it" - so true. I've found that to be the case so many times when learning something new. No point learning something that you won't need or use.

This is great, I run an audio electronics company (company account) and I went to university went through and have got a Masters degree in EE. We do design and repair for the audio world. The funny thing is, I came out with a <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="121">2:1</a> (second class degree), most of my colleagues/friends got 1st class degrees. They were all better at exams - any project or practical design work and actually DOING electronics, I was miles ahead despite on paper being not as smart. Actually building stuff and having fun is how I learned what to do and not to do. The maths helps - but the maths is a means to an end whereas its taught largely as the end goal itself - hence why they did better in exams but in the real world I am far excelling. Electronics is as much a creative art as it is the physics behind it, you need to have a creative brain to design and repair and understand how everything works in reality - algebra is great until you don't understand why it doesn't work in real life! Great video, will subscribe.

As someone who's been doing the theory first, this video was the perfect kick in the butt I needed. Cheers man

Great video. Especially about the teaching system. I learned tons of equations and knew how to put variables in to get an answer. It wasn't until I did my own research later in life that I learned the origins and practical applications for each of them. Now, they become infinitely interesting. If I know that a certain equation will dictate whether a bridge stays standing, I'm more inclined to pursue that knowledge.

My teacher in tech school hated that we had to go to a math class-his opinion was "when was the last time you took the back off of a TV and a bunch of number fall out that were keeping the TV from working"--his idea for math was teaching us math that would help at the time you handed the customer the bill-on another note when we had a training class on the new digital microwave system the fellow running the class was going over how the digital microwave worked he justified the class by saying that " you want to make sure the data being passed it accurate and correct because that decimal point that may be being transmitted in the wrong place may be in the data relating to your paycheck"

ARRL handbook is great. And don't feel like you need a recent version. Not a lot of change, especially on the fundamentals, year-to-year. Also a huge fan of Art of Electronics.

I really enjoyed how you explained everything and this video came off very motivating. Thanks for making it.

Physics degree here too. I certainly remember basic passive circuits, but we never got into "the real stuff", analog active electronics, anything with semiconductors, etc. Years later I did a few DIY kits with guitar pedals and microphones and I learned a ton, especially when troubleshooting things that didn't work properly. Ironically I did ham radio too, but I never got too much into it, but that ARRL handbook would have been SO helpful when I was troubleshooting, just to understand what the larger building blocks I was looking at (active EQ through an op amp, clipping circuits, etc).

I too am self-taught at electronics. I am pretty early in my self-taught education at the age of 29 (started about 2 years ago). Its a lot of fun and I’m really glad that I went down the self-taught route instead of waiting for colleges to accept me for the stupid degree. Regarding your point about feeling vulnerable about admitting that you’re self taught: I also have that vulnerability. I think most self-taught people do. From my experience, some people are assholes who go “how can you be self-taught in electronics? you have to go to school to learn anything!”. I find that funny because 1) The fact that a person feels the need to go to school to learn something shows how little self-discipline and lack of self-assertiveness they have over their lives. 2) at the end of the day, knowledge is knowledge.

The Math actually is essential to fully comprehend the theory.

wow great course, totally love the oscilloscope computing the Bode diagram on its own !

Great Video i learnt electronics back in the early 70s self taught just read books easy when you have interest in the subject remember being fascinated by Philips electronic sets later became a Tv engineer back in the UK Now retired in Thailand

you can't explain what happens when you throw a light switch without quantum field theory. jackson's 'classical electrodynamics' doesn't contain the word 'voltage' in the index. one learns electronics by building. it's a bunch of imperfect devices clumped together with approximations and prayer. for a real challenge, attempt to teach physics to an electrical engineer.

Hi, thank you for making this video. Actually, I have a math degree (graduated a few years ago and theres a long story behind that). Very similar to your childhood story, I’ve always been interested in opening things up (especially electronics) and I really enjoy learning about electronics. I’ve been (really slowly) self-learning electronics in my free time. I like to spend my time really trying to understand the material (typically it leaves out explanations for why things are the way that they are). One thing in my learning that I need to do more is do more hands on stuff like you’re suggesting and just to try out stuff, even if it means it breaks. I know that this field is extremely protected, meaning that some people who studied electrical engineering formally will say nasty things towards you if you share that you’re self-taught in electronics. Sadly, this has been my experience. I’ve been bullied by electrical engineers basically. My day job is embedded software engineering (again, I have a math degree so im all self-taught). The amount of hate I’ve received for being self-taught is ridiculous. But, this is my path in life so I’m going continue to pursue it, even if other people have issue with it.

Thank you. I enjoyed the info , I have those books you mention . I also have some instruments and lots of parts to learn from. Once I get everything moved and settled . It will be time to practice .

One of the most honest answers, i heared on Internet. You are a legend, and you are awakened. :)

I have wasted my entire life with electronics🤥

*20 minutes went by too fast*

Thank you for your encouragement. 👍

Totally agree, I've always learned the most from building something.

I´m happy to have come across this video, I´m trying to get more into science and technology which can be very challenging and I think this helped. Thank you.