Electronics Engineering vs Software Engineering

What a great thread to start.

When I was an Electronic Engineer I found that learning about how Physics were applied in the world gave one the power of a creator. For once in your life you really know how stuff was put together and how the machine ran.

Now that Windows has taken over civilization and few so few know what a "PUSH or POP" is and who knows what a Binary Word means? The world has changed again to let those who have only a shadowy view of reality run the place.

With such a limited control of the Realm where can they take it to?

I Dunknow do You?

The technology moved so fast and became so easy to get it that million dollar mainframe reached home or few hundred dollars. Brain machines became music and video players and perhaps entertainment and gambling machines They also became ATM machines in embedded form and many other tools of today became part of these machines that were high end long ago. Mobile phones also became special with power of the computers and great development in RF electronics and processing mechanisms.

People became like house wives and they are using computers like TV and mobiles. Software engineers have only that much knowledge about their computers. Perhaps some more knowledge of plug-in holes here are there in the front and back of their computers to put cable, CD, Flash etc. Yet these people can create another world using software screens and graphic images as tools are software even for best hardware of tomorrow.

Electronics engineer without software is worthless today while software engineer without electronics knowledge can manage. Even doctor can use electronics for sophisticated imaging and robots to carryout surgery.

The one who uses tools runs much faster like Formula One cars. All you have to do is to sit in and press a bit on accelerator and your are called great. On the contrary, one who start at the bottom of creating nuts and bolts to let that supper vehicle remain in one part gets nothing.

Electronics today is a dirty assembly line low grade business, while software, is all hi-fi show business. You can make a billion dollar movie using graphic image manipulator software without even a single show screen or camera to film a movie.

I think brain part runs faster than hands, so brain is taking over hands. Robots are replacing hands. Glimpse of knowledge that was electronics is now software codes of logics. Analog is more quantized information and is being replaced by digital wherever possible. Electronics of a decade ago will be history very soon and may be buried in some ground or may be moved to museums of visual fum.

My son who did Electronics Engineering after seeing how hard it is to design things opted to move to Computer Software MS where his creativity was much faster and became result oriented.

I think electronics will reach a sad end and a new name for it to emerge with soft-electronics like ideas keeping software in the front and electronics in the back.

Many parents along with their children come to meet me to say if electronics is a better choice. I often say software to girls and only some boys are advised electronics. Most of the electronics engineers do not work in electronics and those are working in electronics are not electronics engineers at all. Physicist often end up doing electronics and some other researcher who felt great using instruments also become electronics hobbyists.

I don't think that electronics will be going away anytime soon. I would even say that it will never go away. What will happen is that there will be less and less people going into this profession than do today.

The electronics profession has changed somewhat. There was a time when I was "Lord of the Board Level Technicians", able to find an offending component, replace it and get the thing back up and running. Today, everything is in modules or cards. Why fix the card? Just replace it! The sad thing about it is that the skill level to do that is practically nil.

My wife has two nephews. One came to me and asked me about my profession and decided he wanted in and took up Electronics Engineering. The other came to me and asked what are my projections about my profession. I gave him the truth. He went into Computer Science. Today, he is making more than I am and was recently sent to the U.S. for a six month stint at his company's main office.

The electronics engineers who stay will be the ones who design the cards and modules and things. The electronics engineers who used to maintain these things will probably be replaced by technicians who know only that the card is not functioning properly and needs to be replaced.

What's a transistor? Oh, that! Well, we don't bother with that anymore.

Hi Vulcan

That is excellent view of electronics of the past today and tomorrow.

Initially it was thought that electronics should last life time and perhaps few next generation should also find these useful. You might have seen that in some rubble the star-track crew will find some working computer, that kind of Idea was in early days.

Now that electronics is only few thousands of trapped electrons and they may leak any time, the electronics is gone like your soiled juice which you forgot to drink in time. I am sure some day electronics will come to work only between your tea and dinner served in the tray and disposed off after you eat your food.

Culture of disposable has ruined everything. You can not differentiate between long lasting and disposable items. I find many electronics watch that are sold 10 for a $ and they have LCD and battery and give time. I have also seen 4 for a dollar laser pointers. Who cares attitude is very common in electronics and yet we need something to survive. Perhaps there will be a class of electronics industry that will separate itself completely from the rest in order to make a pacemaker to survive for 20-30 year in the body or remote experiment in no man's land for two decades.

There are unlimited dimensions for the electronics so there will be greater use and most of the things will be hooked to the electronics. Who will exist and who can survive and be at the top will decide on economy and ingenuity. Rest will become cheap labor, scrap knowledge and finding no way to enter into current work of technology. Technology has moved far from hands to robotic machines. This is what the old generation feels a pinch of. The new generation does not care and find something else for itself. The skill of the old is going to be buried unless translated into new logic system of current way of working.

Many top companies that were in great electronics business closed out or were sold out. Only those who could manage the balance between old and new exist today. Even among then, change is a source of fear and happiness both.

Today, there is greater need of Physics knowledge, Mathematical skill and grasp of current technology to lead the way to future. Experts are like Superman and Tarzan. It is great that there are now billion people across the earth involved in technology creativity and it is hard to count names even though it is hard to find a class of sixth sense that was in many who were from classical to quantum era. Scientists are only verifying what was said and done before and unable to say more.

Once we realize that whatever we are doing today in the form of technology is rubbish then once again sixth sense will start working in some of us and will drive us to another reality lamp shade from ever lasting darkness around us of unlimited ignorance.

The final form of our electronics will be only the understanding of the life system on the earth and in the universe as that is the one which is the supper most effective form of the electronics created by the nature and your God if you believe in God. The smallest creature has wonderful sensors for food and self survival from all shorts of problems in the environment and way towards evolution. Our electronics has no way to evolution by itself and only our knowledge evolution is driving it up. Hopefully, one day we will do things the way nature does.

This paints a dismal view of being an electronic engineer...

I know that having the knowledge of how a transistor works is essential to be able to design these new integrated circuits, the physics behind how a transistor works is essential and something I take pride in knowing something about...

Most electronic designers are now using computer design models, using 'spice' etc... to design their instruments... and in most cases they can muddle through...

I take great pleasure in testing some of these computer aided design programs and I've yet to come across one that works sufficiently well for me to use!!

Its all very well someone on here asking about how to design a variable gain amplifier and having all the responses point to the latest chip etc...

I however, would take the most pleasure from pointing out that a simple common emitter transistor amplifier with a junction fet and capacitor across the emitter resistor will provide all he needs.... for just a few components and a few pence / cents...

Better still why not just use the forward resistance of a diode? as an attenuator with an amplifier stage afterwards....

Simple, neat, small and cheap!!

I can and do use microprocessors, but only if they are needed, too many so called engineers opt for their own favourite circuits that may well be overkill, both in specification, complexity and cost for the application... Some will just tap on their computer and supply a file for the 'completed' design...

I've found that for a simple circuit such as the variable gain amplifier on the other thread, its much quicker to sit down at the bench and solder up a circuit, designing it as you make it, test it and document it in an hour - quicker than it takes to boot up a computer, load program parameters, do a trail by error design and end up with a design in the computer that may bare no resemblence to how it should work in practice!!

Call me old fashioned if you will, I can design software programs and use computer aided design tools, as well as point out their flaws!! But for a true 'engineer' there's nothing that beats sitting at the workbench and designing a circuit as you make it and then sitting back with that warm feeling that you've beaten a computer and the younger generation of designers hands down...

John

Dear John

I am coming in even though this was pointing to others reply.

Well said. We can always feel good when you say it is simple to design electronics circuits. That is the kind of experience you have in physics, chemistry, computational-science, and practical engineering. It is not all that easy for a young man to have it in a day. How many years you took to become that.

Do you remember, your early electronics and how it was? You are an asset to the world and if you take all that knowledge with you alone then perhaps much of your potential is lost. You can give training to many engineers and make them good. Your knowledge will remain alive for next few decades. It is a difficult thing to do but essential for passing knowledge to the next generations.

I have been giving training to the engineers for many years now. Many will find hard to understand why there are so many types of transistor amplifiers. They also do not understand the way you can easily pick the resistors that connect to the transistors. They think it is magical to select these and perhaps some kind of random number we use. They also do not know the difference between voltage amplifier and current amplifier. many have idea of Ohms law and when they see that power is flowing into antenna through one end and having no connection to the other end, their Ohms law shatters in no time. It is easier to use an LED as lamp but hard to know the way light is generated inside because other transparent diode does not generate it for same voltage and current.

Electronics is not a limited college education knowledge of few years but a real experience gained by working on things and by realizing the response of the material along with few basic Physics mathematical equations and more to it in time. In India TV and Radio repair people are high school failed people and they can easily repair these instrument. Engineers just can not do that.

Worst of all is that the young engineers now look for solution on the Internet rather than doing by hand. Searching information and interaction to expert is not a bad idea but doing by hand sure helps much better.

Many manufacturers now going only for SMD parts and that makes the parts useless after they are soldered. Earlier thru hole parts could be on socket, can be pulled out and reused. I think today electronics is more demanding on performance than it was ever before or we just did not have chance to reach the best. Instruments used to test the circuits are very expensive and only some big facility can have. Perhaps it is easy to learn in colleges and research labs than at home.

I will like to make a teams of such expert in many places on earth and I am willing to travel and join the activity of training to engineers. I have lots of resources for it and I love doing such things even though these affect my regular developmental work. Even if we conduct few workshops in an year, it is worth doing. I conducted two conferences and workshops in Gwalior city and these were attended by 650 people. Radiometrix UK and Rotrax International Mauritius partially funded one of the meeting. I did the remaining part of it. I have also done similar programs in Singapore.

Let us do it together once a year event with lots us joining hands together. If you do not know where to do it then do it in India. I will welcome it anywhere on the earth.

Hi Shyam,

You can do anything if are willing to buy of the shelf instruments and actuators, stick them in a 19" rack and tinker with the software....but

You can't do anything 'smart' without the electronics.

Most electronics designers these days can write in assemble and probably high level languages too. Software writers are at the mercy of the platform.

Put anotherway...electronics designers can do without the software writers...the converse is not true.

Just look at a mobile phone...we'd still have a working mobile without some of the software frills....but without the clever hardware....

Now...just don't start me off an accountants...

Hello Del

Some electronics is simple trial and error, but some requires computation, modeling and then trial and errors. You never ever get 100% results in translating ideas into reality on the table.

The basic design of the transistor is modeled flow of electrons and then you end up with semiconductor defects forming many energy levels on the surface and things do not work for you. You go back to the physics knowledge that deeper material has fewer quantized energy level so properties are more stable. You make buried transistor and it works much better.

Electronics is first semiconductor physics, metal physics and insulator physics all put together and lots of quantum mechanics to play role.

The new generation electronics have moved to quantum dots, single atomic layer transitions, Josephson junction tunneling and trapped charge with controlled spin behaviour. You already have quantum memories and brain like processing mechanism of the particles to know the information. We may enter into another era of technology if we can figure out how photon are made and change their behaviour or how charge particles can be make to learn and work like pet dogs.

We are having people on one side fiddling with transformer, diodes and capacitors and on the other side digging deeper than the past reach of not so old quantum mechanics. I predict that in a decade we will enter the sub-quantum mechanics knowledge and will have something we do not know now. You already know C60, carbon molecule cage and cages of many other organic structures. People will not longer talk of transistors, as they understand how bio molecules handle information with such a clarity, so-fast and hold our brain working for 100-years and pass the genetic information for another million years to be here. We are at very infant stage of electronics knowledge. In coming time, the electronics, chemistry, physics, computational software, biology, nano technology and engineering will merge in one field. To master that all will require supper brain or we all will work collectively to create that supper brain as millions of cell in our body make us as one identity. Something like Broka's Brain by Carl Sagan is closer to the thinking and understanding.

While for the beginners it may sound fantasy or scary idea but in reality the knowledge world has moved very far and is further moving very fast. So many brains world over will sure bring in more knowledge in shorter time by experimental results. This is all what we are talking about, but these experiments are far more different and difficult than just few components to make a battery eliminator and fan speed control or battery charger.

Electronics today is to translate the biological sensing mechanism into human generated sensors. They may some time use genetic material itself to do the job and chip may them work like a live system. What else is the way?

If one bio-molecular structure can collectively make a person like Einstein then that is the part to make more such active system to see how best it works. We may perhaps be replacing the current type of human being with those reconstructed by bio-electronics changed mechanisms. Even if you do not want to go that far, you can easily understand that each cell structure is a supper computer embedded system. We have not yet learn fully to use this system. This is the future electronics material and perhaps may also get further modified. Hunting for inner knowledge in bio-sensor is now on and with greater knowledge of physics, and experimental data we may be closer to more creative world of bio-electronics.

Semiconductor transistor is breathing its last life. In a decade or two it will be obsolete and forgotten thing. We will have bio-chemical factories making computers so tiny that they can be injected into brain and will automatically find their links and locks. This is what I see in my dreams. I just hope they come true in my life time.

I am planning to buy a good microscope to experiment this part of the electronics using fields and forces from electromagnetic spectrum on bio-system to make new type of electronics for others to learn from. It is like fiction for many and also a reality for many. My new journey in electronics field goes this way now from this cross road of knowledge. We all will come to meet again on the same point some time later.

Read all these

Researchers create potential toxic sensor chip by combining electronics with living cell

http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/06/09_toxic.shtml

DNA-based sensor chip detects metals in real-time
R. Colin Johnson R. Colin Johnson

http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20001228S0016

One reason I enjoy electronics and computing as a career is that we have grown up together! I hope you vision is correct as it should be fun. But will it be less accessible to the hobbyist?

I learned from electronics hobby magazines and by building audio amplifiers from discrete components. I'm not sure it's quite so much fun now as it's more ICs microcontrollers and programming. We still need to be able to handle discrete components to do the interfacing. I don't know how kids get into electronics these days...

The hobby electronics survived even though the companies that started the hobby electronics kits got finished in time. Look at Heathkit, Sinclair Computers etc. Experimenting with electronics parts is one thing and taking it as profession is another.

Mr. Dell the Cat quotes progress, The first mobile phone I ever saw was at Collins Radio. It had a Jeep full of electronics supporting the standard POTS phone on an aluminum box. It was connected to an array of Yagi antennas in a antenna farm that was so sophisticated to remember just a fraction of what was there putt's one into one of those Australian Bushman dream states.

Now the thing is smaller than my hand and only one like my youngest knows absolutely how every function works

So in retro spec we are advancing full steam ahead, but the fond memories I had as a kid attempting to do HAM Radio hi freq moon bounce, few kids of today will experience those joys and all that makes those joys possible. The culture to do that is harder to find and harder to blend into, I think?

So we got more, is it better enough?

Hi

When there was no electric power in the village where I was born and only source of light at night was a kerosene lamp, I could see all stars clearly each night and I used to sleep on terrace just to watch milky way and shooting stars.

With flood lights everywhere today, our vision blurred, we hardly notice moon once a while. One requires a telescope to watch the stars or one looks for a massive power failure to find the difference.

Now I am in city and houses are like a box and we hardly think of sleeping at roof top of the house. Heaven full of stars was more beautiful than all the great building put together. We learn to live in new reality and hardly notice our valuable loss.

Todays kids are smarter in new technology and it is for them we all brought it out. We are not yet down the drain as we carry a lot of valuable old stuff that makes sense even today. We can not become like new generation and they can not become like us. It is all right to give something to new generation that is relevant to them and not what is relevant to us or admired by us. The needs are different so we must accept it.

I asked my son to evaluate himself and analyze after discussion what is best possible thing to do. We finally both agreed that it was good for him to move to software and computer science and keep the electronics background for hobby purpose. Now he is just doing that. Only hard core move to hardware. There is hard core in software also and only some take to systems programming. I came across Dr. Arun Bhunia's research work and found that he used quantum mechanics to detect bacteria and pathogens. No one says you can use this or you can not use that. It is up to you to build your life ways. There are more opportunities today and world o today is not simpler in any way than ever it was. It some times looks simple as we have laptop and mobiles and easy to bank or share information. Our priorities keep shifting and we find ourself in new arena of tough living all the time. Good it feels when life is worth living in this way.

I've always assumed that elec eng's were born that way ie shy, obsessive, curious, creative and with a flair for higher maths.

I don't know what the best career is, but doing something you love is always a clever choice, especially if it's doing something others can't do. The EE's I know have all moved into good jobs and have the skills and attitude to become pretty good programmers when needed. Jeff

Personal character does not go with profession and we are talking about the comparison between to high grade professions. We can not live without either of them now. Without electronics you have no computers and without computers to design electronics is now nearly impossible. They have become egg and hen story. Hen can easily shout and still get drilled and one can eat egg without a fuss. These two great engineering professions and are key to all engineering services now.

Idea here is to make a point of which one is an easier profession and yet gets you more bucks in bank account.

Hardware and software, as you know, have a lot and different difficulties... There is no way to choose which one is easier to be learned and developed... I'm Greek and I have to say that, unfortunately, in Greece, engineers are (generaly) cheap emploees... ( e.g. it could be a very good invest for a company to have an R&D department here in Greece because it could be relatively cheap )... So the money is not a kriterion in order to choose to be an engineer... I thing that the only criterion is to love this occupation... After 16 years of work (in a telecom R&D dept.) I still find my work fascinating... It's a continuous creation and almost every day I learn more things...

But, in another point of view, my sense is that it's more beneficial to be occupied with software (in a general meaning, hence e.g. VLSI design is included) instead of hardware (although I am a hardware engineer)... Nowadays, more and more electronic engineers work on software... This happens because more and more "circuits" (e.g. from simple "glue logics" up to sophisticated protocols) are "constucted" inside large VLSI chips or inside microprocessors and microcontrolers (via software) due to the complexity of the systems... So a company that develops a project needs more and more software engineers than hardware engineers...

Right from your comments it becomes very clear that you are still learning electronics even though you have many years of working experience. Perhaps a software engineer will be faster at results and to get a good job. For software to crap you only delete the file and for hardware to scrap you lose material and have to buy new one once more.

In software development, you can see the outcome with the click of a finger and in hardware, from design, procurement of parts, PCB design and fabrication, assembling and testing using high tech equipments may take months. Because hardware engineers are slow, they can also earn slowly and less. Software to reuse is copy a file but for hardware reuse is material and time and again quality test.

I find that software work runs 1000 times faster than hardware and multiplication of software is much faster. Look at IBM and Microsoft. How come Microsoft has grown faster than anything? Even though people copied and pirated software, there is great money in it as long as you can make and sell million copies of it. You can not do that easily with hardware. Software can be copied from net but not hardware.

As a profession, software is always one up in money even though its backbone is hardware. I can easily say that hardware people regretfully work in most difficult environment, so their ego is well justified but their return on work simply can not be justified.

Software became a key to data processing in embedded hardware also. While hardware price dipped, more and more new software were invented and these made people to keep paying all the time. You upgrade a software with small function and ask more money. This is difficult with hardware.

My motto is "If you cannot beat them {eat} join them.

A combined effort do produce wonderful results.

I studied electronics at college (more than 20 years ago) - I loved it; as others have said, being "that close" to the physics underlying the technology was great. Of course, at that time software engineering was a relatively new profession (sure - IBM and the like had had Cobol programmers for a long time - but IMO that's a lot different than software engineering). Now, however, I'm a software engineer.

Today (again, as others have said) the world is a very different place.

I split the electronics world into a few broad categories:
> Radio Frequency work,
> chip design (such as at Intel, AMD, Motorola, etc.),
> circuit design (including programmable chip design) for high volume products (VCRs, TVs, Cell phones & base stations, PDAs, other gadgets, etc.),
> aerospace & military systems, and
> very low volume custom circuit design work (system management sofware for industrial processes).

Similarly, the software engineering world can somewhat be partitioned:
> work at one of the big software OEMs (Microsoft, Apple, Sun, Oracle, etc.),
> games development,
> "shrink wrap" software for retail (software development tools, software libraries for companies to use in their products, systems that many companies need to use - e.g. Point of Sale systems, etc.),
> systems software (low-level programming of electronic systems - control systems, VCRs, etc. - i.e. stuff that also has electronics in it; this can be both in the high volume retail area and the very low volume industrial area),
> aerospace and military systems, and
> "enterprise software" (custom software written for a specific business, either by in-house developers or by consultants)

The question then becomes (in three parts):
1. Which pays more?
2. Which is more enjoyable?
3. Which is easier to get into?

In my opinion (having worked in both software and electronics), software engineering is both easier to do and easier to get into (there are simply more jobs for software engineers).

On the other hand, if you are able (and have the drive) to get into "high end" electronics systems (PC chip sets, graphics chip sets, cell phone chip sets) or industrial control systems (nuclear power station control, for example) the work can be very rewarding.

In both fields I think it's easy to find low paying positions and, for those with the drive, vision and skill, exceedingly well paid positions.

As to future trends in these industries - neither one is going away, and each is going to get more esoteric as the simpler aspects of their fields become standardized. This is most evident already in the electronics industry where all the easy chip design has been done, leaving two principal areas: custom chips (either programmable, for most of the industry, or true custom, often for the military) and high-end chips - such as produced by AMD, Intel, etc.

HTH,

Chris

Odessey, I have to disagree with you on a few points...

I agree with your opening paragraph...

But your splitting of electronics into only rf, chip design, high volume product design, aerospace/mil and custom design very low volume, then you add system management?

What about precision analogue instrumentation design?

There are very few left in my field of precision analogue design and its getting fewer as more retire. The natural world is analogue. Analogue is more in keeping with the natural aspects of the environment, it is also much more enjoyable because you have to think laterally and not to a rigid framework that you have to do with software.

Software doesn't produce anything!! (except problems, some might argue!) its only the hands on design of something that does a job to solve a problem that can easily be quantified.

As to your three questions...

Which pays more, which is more enjoyable and which is easier to get into....

What would you prefer? a job which pays more - which means others will be flooding the jobs market to get in and therefore bringing down the pay!!

An easy to get into job? which once again will attract the lazier engineers and so will flood the market with engineers and lead to too many chasing these type of jobs!!

Or which is more enjoyable.... This can be a contradiction as if its enjoyable for some, but hard to study such as analogue design, then the rewards will be higher, not just pay. and because there will be fewer applicants the jobs available will be significantly more, leading to a shortage of qualified people to fill these jobs and hence the pay having to be raised to attract people....

Okay its difficult to get to a suitable qualification to get into these jobs, but surely therein lies the reward, the sense of acheivement, the job satisfaction and the recognition...

I've run my own small custom electronic design business for 23 years now and everyday I am being asked to look into fluid flow measurements / medical patient monitoring systems / food processing control variables / aerospace, military, fibre tip pen manufacture, fuel jet measuring instruments, measuring beer inside a keg without opening it etc... etc....

THAT is where I get almost my total job satisfaction from, the sheer variety of real life problems that an engineer must be able to cope with and comeup with the best, most reliable design that is suitable for the purpose. Not the best in the engineer's point of view, but the best suited to the environment it is to be used for...

John.

I heartilly concur...But don't mess...just open the beer keg ok!

A couple of observations:

1) Physicists have always been on the leading edge of high technology development, starting from the first computers leading to the programs like waht i was involved in at my college of electro-optics. Physicist are paid very poorly to develop scince, and the necessary technologies to conduct science, many times nearly a century ahead of any public markets or understanding (and business managers/marketers are reactive not proactive to public demands)

2)The various aspects of computer related engineering wax and wane as the demands of the industry and society do. In the 70's through the 90's electronics made huge leaps in the personal electronics market, problem was society is slow to adapt to the technological advances than the rate at which they can be engineered consistently over long periods. The industry, much like the pharma industry, doesn't want to make huge quantum leaps in technology, better to take small steps quickly than one huge step (more money and it takes a very long time for business people to understand the value in even very small steps, huge steps appear worthless to the busines managers, e.g. Xerox). Electronics and hardware advancements has stagnated a bit while the utilization and sales of all the previous advancements are taken advantage of and propigate out until new demand is developed. If you have a tone of advances that society is not ready to use, piecemeal them out and make more money. Eventually, there must be quantum leaps, and the future will be optics, the qustion is how far into the future.

3)The utilization of the computational power that has been developed and made publically available in past decades has not been fully utilized. We have more computational power than most people have a practical idea how to fully utilize. Software is playing catch up, and is, therefore, in demand.

4)Maybe the constant search by the industry for the cheapest labor has diluted the industry down. When electronics was making huge inroads, the pioneering was done by home grown labor. In the late 90's alot of the industry started outsourcing to cheap labor in other countries. Maybe you get what you pay for. And it is always cheaper to reverse engineer some thing that sort of operates like the product then pioneer new products. when reverse engineering becomes the industry standard, however, then very few are pioneering new products, the industry stagnates until there is demand for new products, and inventive industry leading companies can not stay in business if three weeks after they invent a new product there are knock offs coming out of china and for sale in Walmart.

5) Engineers who are really technically adept don't make the money that the sales men and marketers do with just a peripheral knowledge of the products anyways. So why even recommend this.

Dear John

Electronics for standards is very hard for the start up engineer. One will also find only few labs in the world where it is hard to find place. The number may run to negligible level. Yes, some people definitely will do great work there. However, it is very clear that precision work requires far more experience and perhaps only top level person can survive.

We are talking here for the two chains of professions under race from fresh level. You go electronics way or you go the software way, where do you win the race?

Electronics has many problems. Look at the way foundries work these days. Some one develops a chip, and sells the designs to many manufacturers and then all of a sudden you find one kind of component coming from many companies with different numbers. Then once the licence to use goes away all people call the product obsolete. Products by many companies have become fossil in time.

It will be a serious mistake to say that software people do not solve the real life problems. You bank account is done through software much better now using the same age old hardware. Thank to ORACLE that they make such a great software. Also look at Graphics and CSD software. Think of making PCGB using those Bishop Graphics tapes now. Look at the animations software that your flight crew gets trained on earth without burning a drop of oil. Simulation package design best bridges, building, dams and space shuttles. In which way software does not go to real life applications? Some software are for big bang computation and so is the dark matter hunter electronics.

There is no doubt the future world can not be isolated from electronics as pure mechanical control is almost ruled out now. Software, is the one goes with electronics not only once but multiple times on the same hardware platform. Software makes the hardware flexible and versatile. You can easily see that difference in hard wired logic and PLC. Which one goes to the industries and why?

Shyam I was following all the discussions in this thread.What you said now is more appropriate. Time is changing Technology is changing very fast .Electronic Valves gave way to to transistors then to ICs ,to digital electronics and micro chips and so on. The fundamental is still electrons.So everything is inter related .There is no existence for software with out hardware.The day we come to super conductor development , everything will further revolutionise. Electronic development will go on .We will have Hypers superconducting Microchips Incorporating 60000 Josephon Junctions and Petaflop computers with thousand-trillion floating point operation per second. Today's fastest computing operations have only reached teraflop speeds-trillions of operations per second. We are outdated and the present generation also will get out dated with this.The change is inevitable and that has to happen. Electronics will be much different at that time than what is today.So we have come from lantern light to computer age.Our children will go from computers to what further ?Novelist dreams Hollywood films it and scientist develops Engineer establishes and the dream comes to reality.So we do not have to worry about perishing electronic basics.

Hi

What is more important with electronics brains is that they are very vibrant and more aggressive than others if they really like doing electronics. This may be due to inherent nature of the requirement of the subject in which so many things plat a role and it is chess like game and has lots of possibilities for creativity.

I find that, people who start liking electronics get hooked to it for life and it is not necessary that those doing electronics have to come from electronics degree at all.

Research often requires instruments, ingenuity to extract information and those getting involved in integration of the system and modification or construction of suitable electronics, start loving the subject as it is something that resulted into success for them and finally they accept it as an inherent part of their innovation process. It becomes an essential tool for them.

Story is different for others who take hard core degree, learn to work in fab factory, do computation and perhaps team up with others to get final results which you often see as semiconductor products. This line of people come from electronics, physics, chemistry and math or computer science background. basically it is a computational field to think and realize in numbers and then translate it on semiconductor and verify it.

Production line of the electronics can be operated by high school educated trained on the machine person. Hence, that game is much different from generating idea of the semiconductor properties, which comes from research of many years and talent that is sharpened over a period of time and also requires lot of inherent talent of the person. I think, those are fit for electronics will sure enter it and those are not should never enter it as this is not for them at all. It is like a WWF arena where only experts of the game survive and if you are scared then sit out side and enjoy the game. Almost every home or person on the earth comes across electronics gadgets in daily life and uses them. Just because one is using electronics does not make them electronics person. Only those create new electronics are actually electronics people.

Initially I thought only few postings will be the response on this thread but seeing the overwhelming response, I am impressed by the spirit and fire within electronics engineers.

Electronics now is an essential part of the life system and way to achieve something that is highly simple and effective to run our life and more ways and means will be invented each day. Electronics will be embedded more and more into each and every thing that requires some kind of operating mechanism, sensing and action taking, information storage, retrieval and communication so on. We may over come the deficiencies of our own being using electronics gadgets and may become worth living on earth in much better way.

I wish good luck and great future for electronics professionals, degree holders and non-degree holders, both.

Software doesn't produce anything!!

This is marginally true.

Software people produce results. They are users. Users of hardware, users of lower level software.

For one creator (of hardware) there could be 1000 users.

If you say that software doesn't produce anything then you can also say that brain doesn't produce anything.

Software is supplementing brain functions, computation, information, and also work. Modern factories are operated through software using same hardware. You can make the hardware to behave differently using software. It may be hard to find a hardware that does not use software.

One may create small hardware just like that for some small job. The moment it start becoming complex you take shelter at your computer. Personal computer have now become an integrated part of our system. Perhaps, before 1980 you can say that most of the big firms only used mini computers. Apple computers, Sinclair Home Computers, and then IBM-PC changed everything.

I should have added that software doesn't produce anything tangible.

Software just collects, calculates and presents the results of data fed in to it.... If its fed duff data then the results will be duff, the software is unlikely to be able to warn the user that the results are rubbish!!

Garbage in - garbage out...

The brain on the other hand produces thought processes which, so far, are unable to be matched by software, that is the brain can absorb complex data of various forms and produce a response / result that can be based on imagination, experience and learning amongst other things...

So comparing software to the brains' thought processes is inapplicable.

John.

Dear John

I am afraid I have to disagree on that point. In fact when you have complex data which neither simple logic can decide nor it makes sense to human brain, we use software to analyze and filter results that ultimately make sense.

You already know image enhancement and image recognition software. Pattern recognition and genetic code search software. To say that software is different from what we think and we need will not be correct. In fact software is our need else will not be there at all.

Software by itself is not a creature to be questioned. It is something always created for a purpose and always improved to do something better. You give logic and speed to software to achieve something that is otherwise impossible. Software is just a LOGIC and it is not one for all needs. It is not an animal like horse of something. Its identity is what we create and how and where we use it.

If you do not use software then you are limiting yourself. It is a great concept to translate brain into machine and use it at supper speed.

Sorry but you're wrong Shyam!!

If we can't understand the data or the desired results then how on earth can someone design software to interpret it??

The major constraint of using a computer is the fact that it can only do what its instructed to do, it can't think for itself.

The human brain can and does make these imaginative guesses at an answer that can lead to a new theory or product process etc... A computer even with the latest software will not be able to do that at the moment, maybe in a decade or more.

You say 'use software to analyze and filter the results to make sense', but what you mean is that the data is modified by the software in a manner that the software has told it to do, to simplify the human brain's ability to analyse it.... a computer will not be able to analyse data unless the human who programmed it has told it how to - A computer is only a number crunching machine, like an old fashioned manual adding machine. It doesn't think for itself and decide what to do with the data!!

You talk of image / pattern recognition etc... the human brain is superb at this and its only recently been possible to program a computer to do a tiny fraction of what the brain is capable of - But once again the computer is looking for patterns that a human has told it to look for, so its not doing anything clever at all!

As for your comment that, "software is not to be questioned...." MY GOD!!!

As an engineer EVERYTHING must be questioned otherwise we will be blindly following each other round in circles getting nowhere!!!

As for your last paragraph about translating brain into machine.... I can only think you must have been a little drunk or having smoked something to write that utter drivel....

John.

I give you simple example here.

You do not see pathogens or have no idea of virus and germs or atoms and electrons.

Now design an optical microscope or an electron microscope and then another world becomes visible to you.

Software is a similar tool by our imagination and we can have another world for us using that tool.

If you can not kill a bird using a stone then build a gun and kill an elephant. It is so elementary knowledge that people right from beginning used tools to be called civilized else we might still be sitting on trees along with monkeys.

Why it is so difficult for you to realize that only when you move you can see what was not seen before. Software is just one way to do it. There are many other ways the brain software works. Our brain is a bio-software based computer and only our body is a hardware. Becoming intelligent you have now built those giant metal aeroplanes that you can fly in these to moon and beyond. It is just the effect of working software in our brain which we call intelligence. Same thing in machine is called an artificial intelligence.

I worked very hard for 22 years for the government and when I retired from job I was happy to get good money to start the business. Now sitting in a chair each month I earn that much money or multiple of it and I find time to discuss all this with you. Now my brain is software and at that time it was hardware of my body which I used to transport several km daily in order to get some salary. I can now give more than that to many.

Using brain and using brain support computer the world is moving very fast now. Hardware is not much different and software world has just multiplied very rapidly.

You will be much more productive if you just use the potential of software. I use hardware and software both. Many times my systems are improved by software without altering hardware. All that takes only an email to the client with a file attachment. Try to understand the genetic code that makes us from simple four proteins. It works so fine and we are here due to it. Software if goes wrong can do lot worst. While we can be happy with 23-pairs of chromosomes in each of our cells and the moment it becomes 24-pairs, then everything goes wrong to the life.

Problem here is that you have to point to few industries for electronics work and then there more players in the manufacturing area than buyers. Novice end up finding no buyer to their stuff. This may also be so for software, but half of the world job go to the Oracle software alone and half of the remaining half go to the net based business. Left over one quarter is occupied by all other types of software jobs.

Big industries make industrial electronics, test and measurement instruments, medical electronics, nuclear electronics, avionics electronics, defence electronics and perhaps domestic electronics of all types including communication instruments like cell phone.

Even to work in these companies one requires high skill and training and then automation replaces human labor. Low level assembly line is just getting finished and only here and there few people find the work with their very hard convincing power to the people and only those can not pay to big firms and can not hire the big industry for something they don't understand, some people find there way out using all they have in their brain. This makes absolutely difficult to a fresh man to do anything in electronics that can be seriously called electronics. Of course there is need for people to change sensors, put cables, remove hard disk and perhaps read the meters, press the buttons or replace a fuse or wire out few instruments. This is not electronics at all. This is just a low level electrical technicians work. Are electronics engineers being used as such technicians? Perhaps many work like that and only few work in real electronics and they need not have electronics engineering degree at all.

One basic question remains about the opportunity and scope and then hardship and return from one's hard work. Electronics is tough thing.

You love wiring parts and making small things here and there for small charm is one thing. I am not talking about it. I am talking about professional electronics. How many challenging opportunities exist in comparison with software potential and where the job leads the life and what kind of life one has after that?

A mixed hardware and software engineer or not a real electronics engineer working on VLSI will hardly take an year to reach a very good level to design million dollar chips in a decade with only few hours working on laptop. This is nearly impossible for some one assembling resistance capacitors and transistors.

I may be the only one in India who gets $3000 paid for each amplifier I make for nuclear experiments and I can make millions of these but who will buy these. There are hardly few buyers around. I may be able to make million dollars, then I am only one of this kind in the country. What about others? They stand no chance in front of me as the buyers want the best.

Perhaps some people can survive with small domestic electronics or electrical need and some small level industrial need and one day may become one among the top companies. Working electronics engineers do not have that kind of future unless some one does something very special and also finds a buyer for the idea.

A lot of software should be renamed gullible ware or consumer ware. It is just fuelling the idea that must keep on growing and selling more, this is unsustainable.

We are hooked on the 'growth' and 'profit' thing....If a company can maintain a reasonable market share at a fairly steady size, pay it's workforce from top to bottom a good wage, have enough to re-invest in new machinery, maintenance etc. What exactly is is the purpose of 'profit'? Obviously shareholders want a bit...but why do some companies need to create a huge surplus? surely they are over charging or under paying?

Nice quote from my big Sis...on unnecessary software functions.

'I don't want a camera on my mobile phone in the same way as I don't want to piss in my tumble drier'

Ok, we know the camera function can be handy...but you get the drift.