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?

>>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.