/sci/ - Science & Math

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Anonymous Mon Sep 12 20:42:09 2011 No.3729424 [Reply] [Original]

Any Junior/Senior/graduated Electrical Engineers here?

I'm a sophomore and I'm finding that I already despise my Digital Design course. The labs involve breadboards and wires and function generators, and it's just fucking awful, is this what EE is really all about? What does an Electrical Engineer really do day to day?

Does it get better? If it just gets more tedious and frustrating I might just switch to mechanical next semester.

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 12 20:47:09 2011 No.3729460 bump

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 12 20:54:09 2011 No.3729484 If you loathe that then get the FUCK away from EE. Your life will be miserable.

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 12 20:56:09 2011 No.3729493 I'm taking a physics lab doing the same thing and I love it. Officially it's a course about designing instrumentation, but it's pretty much a circuits course.

Krakengineer !!5XY+x7grkpt Mon Sep 12 21:02:09 2011 No.3729520

>>3729484
This.

OP is probably one of those people who can solve problems on test and homework papers fine but is completely useless in the lab. You will be held in an entry level position all your life if you have an EE degree but can never get shit to work properly.

Anonymous Mon Sep 12 21:03:09 2011 No.3729523

>>3729484

So this is what EEs do all day errday from here on in?

I'll be honest, this was only the second lab, and I have a retarded lab partner, but still. I had no idea what I was doing, the labs are horribly designed and don't explain the purpose of any of the shit you're doing.

Anonymous Mon Sep 12 21:03:09 2011 No.3729525
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That is... all it is.

Unless you want to become an apprentice electrician, who btw actually get paid quite well, you should get out now. Digital design is "the" pillar on which the rest of your education will be built on as an EE. It only gets more complex from there.

Anonymous Mon Sep 12 21:06:09 2011 No.3729541
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>>3729424
I'm an electrical and computer engineer. I'm mostly a software guy, though. I'll tell you what, I like digital logic, I like the courses about microprocessors and all that stuff, but Digital Design was by far the most annoying course I had to encounter. I don't know why. It's not the hardest or the thing I like less, just the most annoying to deal with. I doubt that your professional life will be like that, though.

Anonymous Mon Sep 12 21:09:09 2011 No.3729552

>>3729525

Fuck. Okay. It's too late to really drop my classes this semester, so I'm going to push on and possibly learn to like it, but I'm expecting that I'll continue to hate this shit and I'll switch to mechanical or something.

It's too bad since I've made a few bros in these classes.

Anonymous Mon Sep 12 21:10:09 2011 No.3729561

what the fuck are you complaining about

digital signals are awesome, essentially eliminate noise, can be recorded 1:1, optically isolated if needed, etc.

go look into the old school IC stuff like the 555.

but EE is broad enough you could, i guess, never really have to deal with digital.. but you'd be limited to shit like motors or E&M.. and even motors are usually digitally controlled

Anonymous Mon Sep 12 21:53:09 2011 No.3729568

>>3729561

It's not that I have anything wrong with digital systems, I just hate the hands on shit with the breadboards and actually assembling the shit and testing it with oscilloscopes and shit.

Is that what EEs actually do? I have zero complaints about working in CAD programs and am reasonably good at that. It's the labs that bother me. Fuck breadboards. Fuck oscilloscopes.

Anonymous Mon Sep 12 21:55:09 2011 No.3729572

>Does it get better?

Debatable.

>is this what EE is really all about?

Of course not. Why would you even ask that question when you've hardly even started into the material? By the time you figure out what it's really about you'll have completed the course.

>the labs are horribly designed and don't explain the purpose of any of the shit you're doing

That's less a problem of EE and more a problem of your school and/or your lack of aptitude.

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 12 21:56:09 2011 No.3729573 File: 92 KB, 600x600, oscilloscope.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>3729568 >Fuck oscilloscopes. Hey fuck you buddy.

Anonymous Mon Sep 12 21:59:09 2011 No.3729581

>>3729568
If what you're worried about is hands-on work, then you can stop worrying. The hands-on work in the labs is done so that you have an idea of what you talk about in classes (instead of hearing about transistors and resistors and being unable to distinguish them when you see them). I doubt you'll be assembling any parts by hand, ever.

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 12 22:03:09 2011 No.3729605 >>3729573 >2011 >CRT oscilloscope

Anonymous Mon Sep 12 22:04:09 2011 No.3729613
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>>3729568
>breadboards
>Is that what EEs actually do?

Stop and think for a moment.

Do you really think a breadboard is an appropriate development platform for complex circuits made of hundreds of components?

That would be fucking daft.

They teach you simple shit on breadboards because you need to understand the basics of how electronics work, and it's fast and easy to do it that way.

Real development is done in CAD software, prototyped to PCB and then the hands-on involves testing that design before putting it into production.

>>3729605

Fuck yeah bitch.

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 12 22:10:09 2011 No.3729643 >>3729605 >Implying analog scopes are worse than digital scopes. mfw captcha is "suavely gay"

Anonymous Mon Sep 12 22:10:09 2011 No.3729645

>>3729613
>>3729581

Well... alright. I'm just a little worried that because I suck at/hate manually assembling circuits stuff I'm going to be a shit engineer. All those little holes and my fat clumsy fingers aren't really a match made in heaven.

And mr. oscilloscope... I take it back. You're a pretty cool guy, sometimes.

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 12 22:13:09 2011 No.3729660 And it's shit like this that is the reason freshman aspie fuckers have no idea what any discrete component looks like. Fucking A. Most of my class couldn't tell you a capacitor from a transistor.

Anonymous Mon Sep 12 22:16:09 2011 No.3729668

OP, here's how to decide if you like EE:
Get some LEDs, some 555 chips (not french fries) or an Arduino and do some shit.
If you don't like it, get the hell out.

EE is like Programming, but instead of Software you "write" hardware.
God-tier EE is writing software and building the hardware to support it (eg: robotics).

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 12 22:16:09 2011 No.3729674 >>3729668 rf engineering / electromagnetics is just as good if not better

Anonymous Mon Sep 12 22:22:09 2011 No.3729696
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>>3729645
>breadboards
>little holes

Oh wow, wait until they get you working on PCBs with component through-holes and SMT solder pads (SMT is actually easier than it seems thanks to dat surface tension, except when pic related happens).

Assembly of real projects is done by robots, but until then enjoy soldering components that are smaller in their entirety than a hole on a breadboard.

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 12 22:24:09 2011 No.3729705 >>3729696 >enjoy soldering components that are smaller in their entirety than a hole on a breadboard. Buy bigger packages?

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 12 22:24:09 2011 No.3729706 File: 39 KB, 750x600, 1249180460451.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>3729696 What do you want on your tombstone? >300µF

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 12 22:26:09 2011 No.3729714 >>3729706 s=k log(W) too bad it's taken assuming it happens, i'll have the lattice structure of the first room temperature superconductor on my tombstone

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 12 22:28:09 2011 No.3729722 take signal and systems several EE specialties don't require circuits

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 12 22:28:09 2011 No.3729723 >>3729705 Good luck soldering 80s to your 40-sized board.

>>	resident /sci/ economist !!0CqB7P/574e Mon Sep 12 22:30:09 2011 No.3729727 I wish they would let me take a digital design class. Darn you university.

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 12 22:33:09 2011 No.3729739 File: 115 KB, 469x428, troll_face.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>3729723 Buy bigger board?

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 12 22:34:09 2011 No.3729746 how can you not have fun putting electronic stuff together? i thought my second year mC course was fucking amazing. like how cool is it to program a little board to control a remote control car, and different things like that

>>	Anonymous Mon Sep 12 22:39:09 2011 No.3729761 CS major who had to take hardware classes here, I fucking loved breadboards and wished I had time to take a full circuits class. It's like electric legos almost. [at least to me]

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