dave wrote:
Bill Baka wrote:
dave wrote:
Bill Baka wrote:
At any rate I self educated myself and by ten years old
I was buying used console short wave sets and fixing them up and
probably could have gotten a job as a repair tech at 11 years old.
That motivated me all the way to college, at which point I found
myself way ahead of the rest of the classes. These days things are
going needlessly complex and tinkering is just about out. I can fix
*ANYTHING* built before 1980 since I can get down to the real
component level, but the new stuff is throw away.

I am 60 and I do component level repair on SMD boards. I can fix
more "anything" than you can.

Missed the point. I am an engineer and got that way from loving the
tinkering. Give a kid a box of 'dust' '05001' SMD parts and you will
not have a happy kid building things. I have two microscopes at home,
both lab grade, and some of the passive SMD is getting ridiculous.
Concepts look good in my head, schematic looks good, Spice simulation
is OK, final product is microscopic. Hard to tinker, and I don't know
many kids who will want to play SMD.

Bill Baka

The only way you become an engineer is by getting a degree ending in "E".

Really?
All my business cards (from work) say engineer, damn good one, too, but
no degree ending in "E". I will take smarts over paper anytime, since I
have had guys with Masters from Cal Poly that were useless. One guy, at
least, a recent graduate tried to tell me (His mentor to the company)
started out by telling me he was a 'real' engineer with his degree.
Then he walks into the test department (mine, too) and complains that a
data book is misprinted and shows 3 leads for a 2 lead device. He was
holding a T-03 power transistor and my guys in test almost fell off
their chairs laughing. I *had* to let him go after that one.

I am comfortable placing parts barely larger than a salt crystal. I
have $30 2X Mag Eyes and I can read the numbers on SMD.

On a 0.5mm by 1mm part???

How is a kid supposed to choose a college major if he doesn't even know
if he will like it? I wanted to go all the way to a post-grad
nuclear-physics and math in Chicago but moving to California kind of
derailed my college plans. So here I am having done electronics since
the 60's, no degree.

George W. Bush was *called* president but was he qualified???

Bill Baka