Personally, I prefer digital. Mainly because to me, analog is synonomous (sp?) with RF, so many non-idealities come into play. THen again, it's also the same in digital microelectronics. It just comes up a lot earlier in RF than in digital.

 

I have never done a thing with Digital as I have no clue how to do it. My current goal involving university and EE is that I have a year before I actually go into the EE major so I'm trying to get a big head start for myself by teaching myself a lot of this stuff.

I think you would enjoy Digital a lot more if you better understood it.

 

When I first got into computers, it seemed like 50% of the books I read talked a lot but didn’t say anything. I found that if a book had more than a few paragraphs on the history of computers, you should put it back. It won’t get any better.
I read one book on C language that was written the way you described. He used such awkward wording that I had to reread a lot of it to figure out what he was trying to say. This was not even technical stuff. I think he was showing off. Then he used a quadratic equation to explain structures. Any other books I can breeze right through them and understand completely.
Don’t let a bad author mess you up.
Get the book TecNoir recommended or anything by Forrest Mimms III.

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dknguyen. A modern CPU runs well in excess of 1ghz between logic states. The standard AM radio included in every car built with a radio will still receive the good old 530khz to 1.71mhz AM band, after a certain point analog vs digital is a point of mind, modern construction of chip level semi conductors is actually more interested in the 'parasitic' or lossy RF components involved because they're so much of the current limitations on progressing digital electronics.

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Barely passed my digital course last year. Had flying colours in my analog sections.

I'm working for a major OEM in telecomm equipment, both video and internet (both wired and wireless). 90% of the problems we have in cutting edge technology is still in the analog section (and usually the digital failures are just a case of reprogramming).

Spent my first year there working on the manufacturing end as a production technician on video equipment. The only non-programming digital failures were shorted lines or bad lots. Usually it was either a voltage problem or a filter line.

Moved to warranty a little over a month ago, working on wireless internet boards. Other than a few power amps and bad crystals, I've replaced 2 micros and changed countless filter lines, caps and attenuation pads.

What does this all mean? Even at this stage with electronics, most of the systems still rely on analog more than digital. You don't have to be an expert in digital to get somewhere, you just have to have a good enough working knowledge of it to understand it.

 

Thank you all for providing supportive and interesting information! To be honest, I didn't expect so much response over this topic. I agree with what almost everyone has to say about digital circuit design being a very important foundation in electronic systems. I had a talk with my professor on Friday, and I managed to finish off some labs that day as well (currently 3 labs behind). The prof for my digital electronics is a really nice, easy going person. He basically allowed me to present him with the "left over labs" after the exam next week (basically rescuing me from failing his class because if I fail the lab work, I will fail the class regardless of the mark I get on theory part). I was thinking last night over my "hatred towards digital" issue and I believe the cause of this is primarily due to the practical part of CPLD's. We use Altera Quartus II to program the boards, and the moment our class started working with CPLD's, All Hell Broke Loose. The computers in our labs are overloaded with useless crap so we spent 15% of the time in the labs waiting for the damn thing to open up Quartus. Than we had this licensing issue with Quartus that would randomly pop-up when you are trying to compile your circuit or when you are trying to program it. This "licensing nightmare" wouldn't let you continue with your work (basically you have to find another computer, wait another 15 minutes until it opens Quartus and loads what’s left of your circuit). This licensing issue have been going on for the first 3-4weeks of classes. The college I attend would call and fax Altera 2-3 times daily trying to fix this issue. Anyways, I think that this licensing issue, unbelievably slow computers, and not so well written book sparked my hatred towards digital electronics. I actually enjoyed digital electronics the first semester when we did karnaugh maps, and some very basic circuits. The last topics we did this semester were: Sequential Logic; Counters and Shift Registers; State Machine Design. I don't experience difficulties understanding the theory part. What I hate doing is the lab part of it. I honestly don't know what kind of patience a person must have to carry out these labs (no wonder there are only 2-3 people in my class that actually finished all the labs). Anyways I plant to work hard this weekend so I can pass digital electronics this semester. I plan to attend a different institution in September (hopefully they won't be experiencing the same issues). Other than that I would like to thank you all for your supportive opinions on this issue. I will be definitely looking those books up on Amazon after I am done with my exams.

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Because Frosty is my hero, and 47 is my favorite number. Oh and he is holding AK-47 because he is angry at the world... j/k

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"The people who cast the votes don't decide an election, the people who count the votes do."
-Joseph Stalin

 

Don't let one crappy piece of software dampen your enthusiasm for digital electronics. Your college should have ditched Quartus, ask for their money back and found some other software (possibly even free) that doesn't suffer from silly licensing issues, either that or used a warez crack.

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And http://www.silicontronics.com, same screen name as here.

 

LMAO. THe same thing happened to me in my first digital electronics lab. That lab used Gnome computers and when we first made our accounts we had to set up some config files. The instructionswere a bit unclear and the lines I put into my config file locked me out permanently and it took the TA an hour to fix it (after half an hour of waiting for them to come). And the my computer rebooted 3 or 4 times making me start over from scratch. So when I went home an hour overdue for that lab (and would have to return a couple days later and take another 3 hours on it), I sat their that night in the commons area with everyone else and I was fiddling with a butterknife working off some stress and destroyed my stapler. THen I think I went out drinking that night.