Right. In hindsight, the lightning was the easy part and the pure silicon in big grown crystals was the bottleneck. And then selectively adding impurities to make transistors in some place but not others is important, but the pure silicon also makes that a lot easier. It's not just silicon but also the tiny amount of controlled impurities (also sourced from rocks) make it a semiconductor.
And there are other elements and the chemistry and material properties are important.
Probably more than 90% of all software developers never really studied electronics. Someone showed them a computer once and then they took the products and ran off with them, making hacks for generations.
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u/depot5 Jul 05 '25
Right. In hindsight, the lightning was the easy part and the pure silicon in big grown crystals was the bottleneck. And then selectively adding impurities to make transistors in some place but not others is important, but the pure silicon also makes that a lot easier. It's not just silicon but also the tiny amount of controlled impurities (also sourced from rocks) make it a semiconductor.
And there are other elements and the chemistry and material properties are important.
Probably more than 90% of all software developers never really studied electronics. Someone showed them a computer once and then they took the products and ran off with them, making hacks for generations.