Reviews and Comments

Deborah Pickett

futzle@outside.ofa.dog

Joined 2 years, 2 months ago

Technical nonfiction and spec fiction. She/her. Melbourne, Australia. Generation X. Admin of Outside of a Dog. BDFL of Hometown (Mastodon) instance Old Mermaid Town (@futzle@old.mermaid.town). Avatar image is of a book that my dog tried to put on their inside.

My rating scale: ★ = I didn't care for it and probably didn't finish it; ★★ = It didn't inspire but I might have finished it anyway; ★★★ = It was fine; ★★★★ = I enjoyed it; ★★★★★ = I couldn't put it down.

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The Art of Electronics (2015) 5 stars

The Art of Electronics, by Paul Horowitz and Winfield Hill, is a popular reference textbook …

Not a multivibrator in sight!

5 stars

Golly, this book is a brain-burner, but it was the first time I really understood semiconductors. And I include the Electronics subject I did at university in that.

This textbook starts from the basics of passive components (resistors, capacitors, inductors) and by chapter 3 transistors have been covered. From there it's on to signal processing, amplification, rectification, and, inevitably digital circuits (which are, to me, less interesting).

A critical thing I noticed is that the stereotypical rookie-advanced circuit, the astable multivibrator, isn't in this book at all. There's a digital implementation with chained flip-flops, but the version with two transistors criss-crossed is nowhere to be seen. This comforts me, because the multivibrator just isn't as important in the real world as everyone makes out, and it's actually super-hard to understand.

Because it's a textbook, it has broad coverage of so many topics and it doesn't always delve into every corner …