[sdiy] The future of synth DIY

[Magnus Danielson]

From: Paul Perry <pfperry at melbpc.org.au>
Subject: Re: [sdiy] The future of synth DIY
Date: Sat, 03 Mar 2001 00:48:54 +1100

> At 01:25 PM 2/03/01 +0100, Martin Czech  wrote:
> 
> >Discrete diy soldering and integration of monolithic circuits have
> >nothing in common. Design engineers for monolithic chips spend
> >*a lot* of time to think about "possible" errors in advance.
> >You wouldn't do that in discrete circuits, because it's so easy
> >to simply solder it and measure afterwards.
> 
> There is an analogy here with computer programming.
> When I did it in the 60s, you had a deck of cards and got one (or
> if you were really lucky and had inside contacts) two runs a day.
> So you thought damn hard about whether the syntax and logic were right.
> Perhaps if we could only solder one component per hour, we would 
> become better designers? just a thought..

Yes, we would be bound to. Long and expensive turn-around times forces
better planning while short lends itself to lazyness through many
Trial-and-Horror loops. There are limits to how long you can reach on
a pure empirical work.

On the other hand, I've found people so green at times that they no
longer can do even simple empirical tests in the lab.

For me, the trick is to balance empirical and theoretical work.

Cheers,
Magnus