6.002 Circuits and Electronics

Discussion thread for the 6.002 Circuits and Electronics course.

http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-002-circuits-and-electronics-spring-2007/

I found the lumped abstraction lecture to be condescending on programming and computer science.  We aren't just an over-simplification of physics through layers and layers of abstraction, right?

Maybe.

Possibly.

Probably.

Definitely not. Unless I'm wrong.

This made me laugh.
Of course you are.

>>1
Yes, you are, however even if everything is understood, there are some questions you won't ever be able to confirm the answers to, such as the raw nature of the world. Even if you understood how physics works down to the lowest layer, even if you understood how your brain/mind works and how thoughts are formed, there are some things about the nature of our universe that you won't be able to understand, such as why do we have qualitative experiences, and if we do have them, what are they a property off. Or as Chalmers put it:
"The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information-processing, but there is also a subjective aspect.  … When we see, for example, we experience visual sensations: the felt quality of redness, the experience of dark and light, the quality of depth in a visual field. … Then there are bodily sensations, from pains to orgasms; mental images that are conjured up internally; the felt quality of emotion, and the experience of a stream of conscious thought."

>>1
Computer Science is ultimately a parasite that grows atop physics and engineering and gives no credit.

>>8
Computer Science can be viewed separately if you must, but it wouldn't be very useful in practice without them.

No. Computer science is an a priori pursuit which derives from nothing but pristine logic.

We don't care about the implementation of circuits - that's for computer engineering and other unclean subjects to worry about.

Computer science exists mainly to assist other sciences in solving problems.

If CS were less 'the science of computers' and more 'the science of computation', it'd basically be mathematics.

>>12
CS is a subset of mathematics, genius.

>>13
Mathematics are just applied CS, genius.

>>14
You're an idiot.

>>11
Computer Science exists mainly to create new problems.

>>16
Now I have two problems.

>>14
CS is just applied genius.

>>18
This.

>>18
U MENA PHYSICS

>>20
jews

you mena pause

>>21
*JEWS

As somebody who actually *does* electronics and only programs on the side (and that poorly), I'm willing to give that if you have somebody else to interpret for you, if you're willing to give up that control, then yes, you can view your programming as a separate thing that has nothing to do with diodes or transistors.

That requires trusting your OS or your Java environment or whatever *far* more than I'm willing to on most projects.

Somebody once suggested to me that we should make Java a law and just optimize every OS to interpret Java. I almost wanted to smack him - how the fuck am I supposed to run Java on my 8bit microprocessor? Or on my µBlaze softcore?

>>24
(and that poorly)
That's a bit of an understatement.

>>24
Java's pretty average. I most certainly wouldn't like it to be forced on me. I like being able to pick the range of language(s) I use depending on my needs, I'll usually use as high-level language as I can get without loosing flexibility (Common Lisp and ML would be such examples), however sometimes I need a more low-level control(for purposes of performance or a more close-to-hardware representation), and I use C for such mid-level tasks, while for certain tasks which require very exact control beyond what C can offer, I just use the platform's assembly. In one way, even when multi-threading is involved, some processes might be too slow or might not be that well modeled by usual sequential processing found in the CPU, then someone might want to go lower and make their own hardware (such as prototyping it using a FPGA, or even running it on a FPGA as building one's own ASIC might involve prohibitive costs unless a large number of such chips are made).

There are a lot of possible things one can create and one needs to evaluate their needs and decide on what would be a good trade-off for implementing their idea, or in the cases where trade-offs can't be afforded, what is the best platform to use or create to solve your problem.

>>26

I've never run into a problem that I *could* solve in Assembly but *couldn't* solve in C. I will admit to a bit of luck in that regard, but I believe that when it comes to programming, you write your own luck.

That said, I don't have a philosophical problem with Java. The idea of code that can be run in any OS on any hardware as long as the correct environment is there - that's a great idea. I'd just never use it for most of what I do.

>>1
MIT does not have a pure CS major, just a EE&CS which is really an 8 year major of EE + CS smushed into 4 years, sprinkled with MIT-quality cocaine.

Stop bumping, please.

>>29
ihbt

>>30
Why?

>>31
because i bumped it

<-- check em dubz

Abstraction is overrated.

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