[bigtrakzapzap]

This, 1e6 times. CS/EE here and my father had an electrical automotive shop, and my grandfather and did a HeathKit electronics-by-mail course... and I still didn't have a solid grasp of practical electronics until the lives of Dave of EEVblog, AvE, Bigclive, ElectroBOOM, Strange Parts and working an internship at a GPS manufacturer.

There ought to be some engineering/trades cross-training required even if not going into that trade if one produces things that that trade will encounter.

Also, there ought to be an electronics-by-mail course subscription of not just basic electronics but moving towards advanced knowledge, theory, techniques, and their applications. People would buy it if it were consistently good and had support behind it.

[OJFord]

http://www.epemag.com/

I recommend Everyday Practical Electronics - great stuff and has been for decades, I think my father still has some copies of Everyday Electronics / Practical Electronics (I think the latter was more advanced; the two merged sometime between our electronics magazine buying childhoods) he bought as a teenager, I remember building a couple of projects from them (sound to light, and an electromagnet) before subscribing myself.

Pretty much what made me study electronics at school, and then EE/CS.

Issues don't come with parts, if that's what you were imagining, but they don't need to, that'd make them needlessly expensive and less timeless. One can get started with basic projects with a general 'component kit' and then buy more of the more frequently used and specialised components as required.

[TheOtherHobbes]

Back issues of Practical Electronics and Everyday Electronics are available here:

https://www.americanradiohistory.com/Practical_Electronics.h...

https://www.americanradiohistory.com/Everyday_Electronics.ht...

Undergraduate EE is more of a mathematical modelling track that happens to result in buildable circuits, which will probably work reliably and do what you expect because you've modelled them correctly. It's not so much about hands-on tinkering, which is why not many courses include metalwork or enclosure design.

It's also not about creative EE - clever solutions that use the minimum number of parts, as opposed to average solutions that do the job but aren't outstandingly elegant. IMO you either have a talent for that kind of design, or you don't.

Production Engineering - mass producing buildable circuits and enclosures for the minimum viable price - is a different discipline again. The distance from a breadboard or soldered prototype to a shippable mass-produced product is huge - which is why so many Kickstarter projects come unstuck.

Production Engineering was literally mentioned once on my EE course, and that was all we learned about it.