Electronics Engineering through Real World Examples

How much can you learn from an electronic device/equipment? Quite a lot! If you know its purpose and you have a basic understanding of its intended area of application, you can figure out quite a lot about the internal details of the device by simply looking at it. Once you have managed to crack open the device and expose its internals, you can learn quite a lot about electronic system design. Not only will it enhance your practical knowledge, it will tell you a lot about how actual real world products are designed, manufactured and packaged. Design is not everything in the real world. There are manufacturing and packaging considerations too. A product has to appeal to its intended consumer. The Electronics Engineering Video Blog hosted by David L. Jones is an excellent resource on learning by tearing down devices. As an example, I would recommend to watch the teardown of Zoom H1 Audio Recorder here.

Responsible Student, Responsible Employee

Every year thousands of freshly minted graduates enter the workforce. Universities and other educational institutions teach them many things some of which
end up being used during their worklife and many do not. There is an increasing emphasis on ethics in education and research these days. This is a rather new trend in education and research. Students and university researchers are being taught, advised and counselled to maintain moral integrity in their work. However, one issue that is grossly unaddressed by educational institutions is related to workplace ethics and responsibilities. Many students enter the workforce with little knowledge of such issues. It is very important for them to understand the implications of their actions beyond assigned duties when employed. Industrial or corporate espionage is a growing concern in all highly technical and specialised fields. The duties and responsibilities of employees play a significant role in arresting industrial espionage. Employees may commit such acts on purpose as well as inadvertently. As an example for the latter, one has heard cases of iPhone test sets being lost by mistake etc. in the recent past. It is also important for workplace managers to frame appropriate policies and share the relevant rationale with employees to protect intellectual property. My article titled “Understanding Industrial Espionage for Greater Technological and Economic Security” has been published in the May-June 2012 issue of IEEE Potentials. It seeks to expose students and fresh graduates to different aspects of industrial espionage to enable them to develop some understanding of and appreciation for this issue. It will prove really useful in a world where intellectual property carries very high premium.

Comment About Code Comments

Anyone writing a program in any programming language is encouraged to add comments to the code. Comments help in understanding code. Well yes, this is true as long as the programmer and a reader of a piece of code understand the language in which comments were added. Understanding any programming language is not difficult. They require one to know English. That’s all! However, code comments could be in the native language of a programmer. This is where lies the problem in understanding code comments (besides the usual case of ineffective comments). Code comments in Spanish would be of no use to a non-Spanish user/reader. Shouldn’t there be a universal language or way to add comments? Or, should it the be the case where comments c0-exist in multiple languages: native language of the programmer as well as in English,the universal language of business? Programmers may find it easier to understand comments in native languages (like Spanish, French etc.) while others may find it easier to understand if they were in English. I think that comments should serve both the original developer/programmer as well as anyone else who reads them.