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by certifiedloud 1401 days ago
The Art of Electronics by Horowitz and Hill
6 comments

This. You can feel the author’s excitement about teaching electronics and emphasis intuition over rigorous mathematics proofs.

An example is that they talk about opamps as Lego blocks and how it can be configured to be an amp, a filter, a buffer, an inverter, an oscillator, a switch!

Instead of teaching a bunch of theoretical knowledge, which is important for certain things, they get you thinking how to use analog electronics to do stuff!

This book is available at archive.org

https://archive.org/details/art-of-electronics-3e

The first four or five chapters are quite nice. Beyond that it's too advanced for me, but I mostly dabble in analog guitar and audio electronics.

When I first got into electronics about 10 years ago I started by doing most of the experiments in "Make: Electronics." It starts at a level where you could probably have fun doing most of the experiments with your 8-12 year old kids, were you to have them. The author of that recommends moving on to, "Practical Electronics for Inventors." Personally, I started reading, "The Art of Electronics" afterward.
This is mostly a popular tinkerer's cookbook. If you like a more structural, engineering approach, then the suggestion of Lipiansky's book in another comment is much better.
The only correct answer, really.
The AOE lab book is also great if you like guided learning.
Although the AOB lab book, on its own, presumes you have the same kit used in the original course. If you’re a newbie, annoying/confusing.