I just pulled it down from the shelf to comment, and literally a bunch
of wires and solder blobs fell out on my desk.
Imho what sets it apart is chapter 10 (Minicomputers) which gives you
enough to understand and build a simple microprocessor board, and
chapter 12 (Construction Techniques) that sets you up to build things
properly. Without this I wouldn't have progressed to Alan Clements'
"Microprocessor Systems Design" and got my first 68000 design working.
What a wonderful gift to the world. thanks mssrs. Horowitz and Hill.
I took a class where we used Learning the Art of Electronics (with AoE as a reference), and that book was also excellent. Class was taught by a former student of Horowitz and Hill, and one week the OG did the guest lecture! Unforgettable.
In grad school, my advisor recommended this book, saying, "it will be right up your alley." I bought the second edition, and it was. It is truly a graduate level course in circuit design. I started reading this book (2nd edition) front-to-back, and when I finished it, I started again. It helped me innumerable times when I quit grad school and entered industry.
When the third edition came out, I was at Google in Cambridge, and Horowitz came to talk. I had bought a counterfeit copy from Amazon (by accident), and while he didn't sign it then, he did sign it later (when I got a real copy).
Personally, I think it's worth owning both the second and third editions of this book. It is truly one of the best books about electrical engineering out there.
I’m curious about the counterfeit thing. Did he identify that fact somehow and decline to sign it? Was there some sort of authenticity check built into the books?
I suggest ARRL Handbook. It covers everything, from atom structure to FPGA programming, through antenna design, modulation/demodulation priciples and digital signal processing. The 2023rd edition counts six volumes.
I've read the second edition together with the student manual (https://learningtheartofelectronics.com/) which has additional explanations for some tricky concepts plus extra exercises.
I can really recommend it as a starting point from no/minimal knowledge to having a good overview of the key concepts.
It doesn't cover (at least the 2nd ed didn't) fancy digital stuff (modern microcontrollers, USB, FPGAs, etc) but there are great free online resources for that.
Years ago, I had the lovely opportunity to take the course associated with the student manual at Harvard Extension, taught by the author, Tom Hayes. I was a little high school brat, so Tom probably does not have fond memories of me, but I loved that course, and it set me on the path to becoming an embedded engineer. If you're in the Boston area, consider taking the course via Harvard Extension!
It has been a long time since I last opened this book, which was a library. I recall being surprised by the glowing reviews since I was dumbfounded by the contents. It all felt very loosey goosey for me, like looking in grandma's cookbook. Did I miss something? Should I revisit?
I found that I clicked much better with MIT's Foundations of Analog and Digital Electronic Circuits.
that is why the word art is in the title. regardless, it gives you a good feel for how many engineers actually design stuff in the industry. the problem spaces aren't fully constrained, so you have to fill in the gaps with experience, guesswork, experimentation, and (yes) art.
I bought a copy of this in the past few months. I had my trusty AoE 2E but learned that 3E had expanded chapters on what's happened in the past 30 years in precision amplification. Turns out I was working on a schematic for a nanovolt meter (10 kHz BW, 1 kV isolation).
I whipped out every trick in chapters 5 and 7. I transcribed the massive opamp tables into excel to get a lay of the land and was able to find even newer models that exceeded. I settled on OPA4189 for gain, OP224B for isolation, and OPA1633 for output driving / final gain. It's out to fab now.
I initially wanted to use AD since they're the local guys and I like their style more than TI (who came off as a bit culty in their recruiting). Well all of AD's designs still in production for isolation are 5V supply max. What am I supposed to do with that? Analog inputs do best with bipolar 10V. I'm not eating into my noise budget and adding BOM/complexity because a vendor doesn't feel like making the high quality parts that they used to.
I liked the book but I would like a lot more detail on why the bad circuits are bad. Some are obvious but I thought a few were quite difficult to understand the issue.
I can appreciate the point of view that self discovery of the answer is an important path to learning, but you never know if you are learning the correct lesson. I fortunately had a understanding chief engineer who helped guide me in my early career before I moved to software.
I tried to read it through straight, but got pretty lost somewhere in the transistor section.
The bad news: I still suck at electronics.
The good news: I have this book on hand as a reference.
For better, or for worse: You can get quite far these days being an IC baby. Connect pin A to pin B by apeing data sheet reference diagrams. Electronics-by-numbers, perhaps. So, for better or for worse, electronics fundamentals is only a hard-requirement if you're the one designing the ICs. (Even with RF, there are modules, and IC filters) You can likely think of several programming analogies.
I'm actually not surprised to see the counterfeit warning in the site.
Last week I've ordered a book from Amazon Italy (A Little Java, A Few Patterns) only to receive what I do consider a very low quality copy of the book and somehow different edition despite having both the original and this "copy" same ISBNs: https://www.amazon.it/Little-Java-Few-Patterns/dp/0262561158 and here's the cover of the original one: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262561150/a-little-java-a-few-p...
Not only covers are different (the title in the copy is actually shifted to the rightmost part just as seen in Amazon which immediately makes you think about a counterfeit copy) but the quality of the paper, quality of the cover (both front and back cover bend) and print are different. It feels like the book was printed by a copy center.
Taking a more detailed look at the back it turns out that these alternate versions are printed by Amazon in Italy (despite the fun fact that the very first page states that indeed the copy I have was printed and bound in the USA).
So be very careful to purchase books from Amazon, you can get surprises like these. I used to buy from book depository and as it was indeed another business from Amazon I thought that they would still offer quality books behind scenes, but it seems to be room for Amazon to now also get involved in the business of printing low quality books.
While I was confirmed that indeed the copy I received is not a counterfeit I find it very dodgy for Amazon to do this without at least explicitly mention it in the site.
I just confirmed - this book was my first purchase on Amazon. May 24th, 1999. I had just decided to go from undeclared to EECS at Cal and wanted to take a crash course in hardware. I read the book over the summer and never turned back.
"Practical electronics for inventors" is what you are looking for. I have both books and I am a physicist. It's not that TAOE is not for beginners, it could be if you really want to put on the effort and are decided to go deep.
I've been burning alot of time learning electronics. This book isnt too bad for beginners, but I get way more understanding out of Behrad Razavi's stuff, he has lectures on youtube as well as a book which has way more worked examples. OTOH this book introduces more intricate concepts much more early which can be good for motivation if you dont let yourself get stuck on totally understanding them. For example he goes through a BPT schmitt trigger before he even shows the small signal model for BPTs.
No, I don't recommend it if you are starting out. Unfortunately I don't have a good recommendation, but when starting out modern electronics is not unlike lego building. There's more protocols than analog signals.
If you stay in electronics you'll end up with this book sooner or later though.
It’s good for beginners (also a great reference). However, stuff gets serious pretty fast, and the reader is expected to put in serious time and effort.
After Dick Smith's fun way books as an early teenager AoE was my first "real" electronics book. It was certainly helpful for practical advice, but I did not find its presentation of circuit theory at all clear (the hand-wavy analogy about transistor man comes to mind). At the time I had a music degree and very little undergraduate mathematics and only high-school physics.
More recently I've been dabbling with electronics again. Someone recommended Malvino's "Electronic Principles" (I bought the 5th Edition second hand), which I found much clearer for circuit theory than AoE. Sedra and Smith will probably be my next purchase but I doubt it should be your first.
Also, "beginner" could mean a lot of different things. And perhaps more important than where you're at, where do you want to get to? There's a world of difference between (1) soldering together someone else's design, (2) being able to understand why someone else's design works, (3) being able to piece something together from common sub-circuits, (4) produce your own design from scratch. And all of these will vary depending on the circuit type: analog/digital/RF etc.
Reading some of the other comments, and my own experience, it might be a good book for someone who has already spent some time playing with circuits.
But that's not necessarily an unreasonable hurdle. After all, electronics is about something that happens physically, and maybe getting some tactile experience gets the right brain cells working to be receptive to the theory. Or maybe it's just that the enjoyment of the physical stuff supplies the motivation to learn the textbook stuff.
I might think along similar lines if someone asked for a good textbook to learn how to play the cello.
When I took electronics in college, from 1st edition AoE, I had already been tinkering with circuits for a few years. And playing the cello. ;-)
I’ve been thinking about buying a copy of this but it seems like a pretty steep price to do in a whim. Is the third edition that much more necessary/ up-to-date than a good used copy of the second as a relative novice? Will I end up learning decades old things that are not relevant now?
Yeah, I have no idea what's going on in the comment section. The book is incredibly inaccessible and at least 9 out of 10 students aren't able to read through it
I feel it's only praised bc it's comprehensive and historically important
people often ask why things like this get linked on the front page
i suspect that in this case it's because two comments on the nand2tetris thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38735066 recommended the book (which i remember because i wrote one of them)
possibly if this thread is of interest to you, that one will be too
don't forget that the 3rd edition has a separate volume titled The Art of Electronics: The X Chapters which includes some really fascinating material i've never seen anywhere else. a lot of practical design tips for working with real components along with some very advanced circuit designs. if you're already an EE, this volume is a great way to sharpen your skillset.
[+] [-] nonrandomstring|2 years ago|reply
I just pulled it down from the shelf to comment, and literally a bunch of wires and solder blobs fell out on my desk.
Imho what sets it apart is chapter 10 (Minicomputers) which gives you enough to understand and build a simple microprocessor board, and chapter 12 (Construction Techniques) that sets you up to build things properly. Without this I wouldn't have progressed to Alan Clements' "Microprocessor Systems Design" and got my first 68000 design working.
What a wonderful gift to the world. thanks mssrs. Horowitz and Hill.
[+] [-] projectileboy|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] davrosthedalek|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] begueradj|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nappy-doo|2 years ago|reply
In grad school, my advisor recommended this book, saying, "it will be right up your alley." I bought the second edition, and it was. It is truly a graduate level course in circuit design. I started reading this book (2nd edition) front-to-back, and when I finished it, I started again. It helped me innumerable times when I quit grad school and entered industry.
When the third edition came out, I was at Google in Cambridge, and Horowitz came to talk. I had bought a counterfeit copy from Amazon (by accident), and while he didn't sign it then, he did sign it later (when I got a real copy).
Personally, I think it's worth owning both the second and third editions of this book. It is truly one of the best books about electrical engineering out there.
[+] [-] dekhn|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wildzzz|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Waterluvian|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ruslan|2 years ago|reply
http://arrl.org/arrl-handbook-2023
[+] [-] progbits|2 years ago|reply
I can really recommend it as a starting point from no/minimal knowledge to having a good overview of the key concepts.
It doesn't cover (at least the 2nd ed didn't) fancy digital stuff (modern microcontrollers, USB, FPGAs, etc) but there are great free online resources for that.
[+] [-] mafuyu|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bmitc|2 years ago|reply
I found that I clicked much better with MIT's Foundations of Analog and Digital Electronic Circuits.
[+] [-] billfruit|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tubetime|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kragen|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] willis936|2 years ago|reply
I whipped out every trick in chapters 5 and 7. I transcribed the massive opamp tables into excel to get a lay of the land and was able to find even newer models that exceeded. I settled on OPA4189 for gain, OP224B for isolation, and OPA1633 for output driving / final gain. It's out to fab now.
I initially wanted to use AD since they're the local guys and I like their style more than TI (who came off as a bit culty in their recruiting). Well all of AD's designs still in production for isolation are 5V supply max. What am I supposed to do with that? Analog inputs do best with bipolar 10V. I'm not eating into my noise budget and adding BOM/complexity because a vendor doesn't feel like making the high quality parts that they used to.
[+] [-] kragen|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] belter|2 years ago|reply
Great work but be sure to check the extensive errata: https://artofelectronics.net/errata/
[+] [-] doubleg72|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] butterNaN|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stoneman24|2 years ago|reply
I can appreciate the point of view that self discovery of the answer is an important path to learning, but you never know if you are learning the correct lesson. I fortunately had a understanding chief engineer who helped guide me in my early career before I moved to software.
[+] [-] Physkal|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] the__alchemist|2 years ago|reply
I tried to read it through straight, but got pretty lost somewhere in the transistor section.
The bad news: I still suck at electronics.
The good news: I have this book on hand as a reference.
For better, or for worse: You can get quite far these days being an IC baby. Connect pin A to pin B by apeing data sheet reference diagrams. Electronics-by-numbers, perhaps. So, for better or for worse, electronics fundamentals is only a hard-requirement if you're the one designing the ICs. (Even with RF, there are modules, and IC filters) You can likely think of several programming analogies.
[+] [-] phero_cnstrcts|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] liendolucas|2 years ago|reply
Last week I've ordered a book from Amazon Italy (A Little Java, A Few Patterns) only to receive what I do consider a very low quality copy of the book and somehow different edition despite having both the original and this "copy" same ISBNs: https://www.amazon.it/Little-Java-Few-Patterns/dp/0262561158 and here's the cover of the original one: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262561150/a-little-java-a-few-p... Not only covers are different (the title in the copy is actually shifted to the rightmost part just as seen in Amazon which immediately makes you think about a counterfeit copy) but the quality of the paper, quality of the cover (both front and back cover bend) and print are different. It feels like the book was printed by a copy center.
Taking a more detailed look at the back it turns out that these alternate versions are printed by Amazon in Italy (despite the fun fact that the very first page states that indeed the copy I have was printed and bound in the USA).
So be very careful to purchase books from Amazon, you can get surprises like these. I used to buy from book depository and as it was indeed another business from Amazon I thought that they would still offer quality books behind scenes, but it seems to be room for Amazon to now also get involved in the business of printing low quality books.
While I was confirmed that indeed the copy I received is not a counterfeit I find it very dodgy for Amazon to do this without at least explicitly mention it in the site.
[+] [-] bhb916|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vichle|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nhatcher|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Nahtnah|2 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQDfVJzEymI
[+] [-] comboy|2 years ago|reply
If you stay in electronics you'll end up with this book sooner or later though.
[+] [-] tmalsburg2|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RossBencina|2 years ago|reply
More recently I've been dabbling with electronics again. Someone recommended Malvino's "Electronic Principles" (I bought the 5th Edition second hand), which I found much clearer for circuit theory than AoE. Sedra and Smith will probably be my next purchase but I doubt it should be your first.
Also, "beginner" could mean a lot of different things. And perhaps more important than where you're at, where do you want to get to? There's a world of difference between (1) soldering together someone else's design, (2) being able to understand why someone else's design works, (3) being able to piece something together from common sub-circuits, (4) produce your own design from scratch. And all of these will vary depending on the circuit type: analog/digital/RF etc.
[+] [-] analog31|2 years ago|reply
But that's not necessarily an unreasonable hurdle. After all, electronics is about something that happens physically, and maybe getting some tactile experience gets the right brain cells working to be receptive to the theory. Or maybe it's just that the enjoyment of the physical stuff supplies the motivation to learn the textbook stuff.
I might think along similar lines if someone asked for a good textbook to learn how to play the cello.
When I took electronics in college, from 1st edition AoE, I had already been tinkering with circuits for a few years. And playing the cello. ;-)
[+] [-] _whiteCaps_|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] doubloon|2 years ago|reply
as far as a book, i do agree with @nhatcher , i loved Practical Electronics for Inventors but that was before the internet really took over.
[+] [-] iNerdier|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tshirttime|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] contrarian1234|2 years ago|reply
I feel it's only praised bc it's comprehensive and historically important
It's a horrible way to learn electronics
[+] [-] cushychicken|2 years ago|reply
Highly recommend buying the paper edition.
[+] [-] kragen|2 years ago|reply
i suspect that in this case it's because two comments on the nand2tetris thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38735066 recommended the book (which i remember because i wrote one of them)
possibly if this thread is of interest to you, that one will be too
[+] [-] artsi0m|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tubetime|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] atan2|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] snvzz|2 years ago|reply
It is good.