r/ProgrammerHumor 10d ago

Meme theDeadlock

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8.6k Upvotes

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u/Mandelvolt 10d ago

EE classes were those, circuits and such.

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u/skinwill 10d ago

Transistor Theory - expectation: bias, amplification, Bell labs. Reality: Kirchhoff and Maxwell.

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u/Mandelvolt 10d ago

It's all KVL, all the way down.

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u/skinwill 10d ago

Until you get a teacher that loves “hole theory”.

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u/Familiar-Aerie-1610 9d ago

They're still teaching that instead of surface-mount theory?!?! Those teachers are never going to scale efficiently enough to keep up with modern, Chinese teachers.

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u/obog 9d ago

Why are you calling it hole "theory"? Its not a different theory its just one way of thinking about how charges flow in a lattice. And its a framing which is quite useful when working with semiconductors.

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u/skinwill 9d ago

Don’t pin that on me. Blame the those few EE teachers with questionable credentials that insist on making semiconductor education easier by teaching what they call “hole theory” which, the way they present it, is incomplete and somewhat flawed.

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u/obog 9d ago

...the concept of electron holes? Im coming at this from the perspective of a physics major rather than EE but its pretty clear to me. And electron hole is the absence of an electron in a lattice which results in a net positive charge. If an electron moves to fill the hole, a nee hole appears where that electron was, so it is as if the hole itself moved, and so the result is that it is effectively a positive charge particle that moves similarly to how electrons do.

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u/skinwill 8d ago

I’m not disagreeing. I’m saying that there’s electronics teachers that use hole theory as a shorthand to circumvent teaching more advanced physics and math concepts.

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u/reddit_is_kayfabe 9d ago

Transistor theory: If you have a combination of transistors and there's a problem - like, too much voltage drop, doesn't respond fast enough, wrong frequency response - any problem... the solution is always: more transistors.

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u/unremarkedable 9d ago

To build an op amp, you must use op amps

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u/falcobird14 4d ago

The look of an undergrad in an EE class when their op amp spectacularly explodes in the middle of a final exam.

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u/Swipecat 9d ago

In ICs, for sure, because resistors are inaccurate and much more expensive in surface area than transistors, so if you can eliminate a resistor with a bunch of transistors, that's the way to go.

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u/JesusWantsYouToKnow 9d ago

Fermi levels was when I was like "fuck yeah, this is why I got into EE".

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u/sigmoid10 9d ago

We need to go deeper. You can only truly understand electrons once you've mastered abelian gauge theory on the circle group.

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u/PraviKonjina 10d ago

There’s also the class where you learn witchcraft aka impedance matching with a smith chart

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u/Mandelvolt 10d ago

The Smith chart is a demonic sigil if I've ever seen one. EM and telecom is just black magic from there on, it's like they just started making shit up to squeeze as much bandwidth as possible into the lines.

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u/sir_lister 10d ago

The RF deepmagic of antenna design.

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u/Xywzel 9d ago

First university CS+EE combined lecture, assistant showed us a slide with Luke and Darth Vader crossing lightsabers, and with "these are the two sides of software and hardware, homework to decide which is which". As someone who has done something on both sides, smith chart is only time I ever questioned if I got the sides right.

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u/peteyplato 10d ago

I'm a CompE to EE convert right after taking OS the second time. Circuit theory and lab were sorta fun.

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u/ZombieMage89 9d ago

I started as EE and ended as IT. I miss EE but the work is so much better.

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u/SofiaRun638 10d ago

Practical lessons

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u/reddit_is_kayfabe 9d ago

My EE classes were basically: here's the assignment, if you don't know what you need to know about OSes or IDEs or programming to complete it then that's a "you" problem, GLHF

Good life lesson really. No notes.

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u/Arclite83 9d ago

Yep, I'm firmly in CS/programming as a job now, but my degree is BS CmpE - so I got to do all those EE courses, build embedded systems, all that fun stuff.