A couple clicks through to older lcamtuf posts and I came across this in the "what is electricity" post:

> Once again, we don’t have a satisfying explanation why. We know that these quantum numbers correspond to standing-wave solutions of a three-dimensional wave function that we pulled out of thin air. We also know that the model works better than any alternatives. But we don’t know what any of it really means — or if it means anything.

It is so refreshing to see this explicated thus; physics textbooks are generally coy about "know this for now, and there will be deeper insights available later" but they typically never level with readers and say "we don't know".

I see some discussion of which books are good for people with various levels of electronics knowledge. I'd like to add one that I've never seen mentioned here: Agarwal and Lang's "Foundations of Analog and Digital Electronics".

This was the book used by MIT in 2007 for the first course in the EE and CS programs. It is that year's course that is on their Open Courseware platform [1], and the readings list there links to a full PDF of the book.

(Edit: click the book title on the readings page, not the "View e-book version" link. See my response to groos' comment below for details).

This is not a link to a pirated copy BTW. Agarwal is a pioneer in the open-education movement and the authors intentionally arranged for an open access PDF.

The lecture videos on Open Courseware are very good too.

[1] https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/6-002-circuits-and-electronics-s...

I am from software engineer background and how I learn Circuit is just watching the best 3 video from "Captive Aire" channel:

1. https://youtu.be/pDELW2pIvWw?si=BNsURdXrGLlaAfF3 (Digital Electronic)

2. https://youtu.be/RG3eljmqyq4?si=Pnbvf6P6HbFcIa1v (Alternating Current, Motors, & control)

3. https://youtu.be/nYuVSG89vg0?si=Oe3ZdJojS7T_iGxK (Electric Basic Made is Easy), and

the episode of "Nand to Tetris"

This book looks like it’s targeted squarely at people like me!

I’ve been a software engineer for the last couple of decades and I’ve tinkered with microcontrollers as a hobby but always been limited by my lack of electronics knowledge - very much trial and error to get a project far enough to be able to focus on the firmware (which is more my domain). I want to bridge the knowledge gap there.

My only formal electronics education was first year introduction to analog and digital circuits module at university two decades ago, led by a lecturer who assumed students had a huge corpus of pre-existing knowledge (and who I now suspect would have preferred to be supervising his PhD students and conducting research but had to make up the teaching hours - which I do understand).

I will definitely pick up a copy. However, Amazon UK (to avoid the NoStarch UPS shipping cost of $24) won’t get it to me until November. I’m excited to receive it.

If you're ordering from Europe, be sure to check if it's available in your local Amazon page first, I almost got slapped with like a 50% shipping/import charges because I went straight to the main link (the US amazon). The ones that have it are listed in the blog post.