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The art of electronics has some nice ideas.

1) don't use a calculator. It's easy to plug numbers in without really understanding what they mean, and also believing a number that is several orders of magnitude out. And after the first week of converting between micro and nano and pico you'll have a good grasp on what those numbers mean.

2) draw circuits by hand. You'll be working on small circuits and drawing them is a bit like the "learn whTever the hardway" approach of typing stuff in.

3) for analogue DC circuits it's about manipulating current, voltage, resistance. For ac circuits it's power and impedance. For digital it's 1s and 0s and timing.

3a) in context components serve a role - decoupling or current limiting or amplifying or etc etc. you get to learn the configuration of a few components means an amplifier, and so you know that a voltage across those pins means a bigger voltage across those other pins.

Years ago the advice was to grab some second hand equipement and some new components and a breadboard and make circuits. The eauipment would be a powersupply, an oscilloscope, a signal generator, maybe a multimeter. The components would be a few resistors and capacitors and transistors with so e 555s and 741s. (With a few 4xxx series thrown in). Nowadays there is almost certainly a virtual set of this stuff that you can run on a computer. Perhaps some HN reader is involved in it?

The Art of Electronics (and the Student Lab book) used to be a solid introduction - hard work but good. I'm not sure if there's anything better for general use and I guess there's a lot of dated content. Microcontrollers is one example where you'd want additional books.

Tldr: do it.



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