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Ask HN: What books for beginners in electronics and programming

4 points by fnordfnordfnord ↗ HN
This is a short, and not yet finished list of books that will be submitted for inclusion into a STEM center library at a small community college in a dirt-poor area of South Texas. The vocational degree plans are Drafting, Electronics, CS, Video Game something or other, and the academic track degree plans that will be affected are the usual, Physics, Chem, Biology, Math. I teach electronics, so I am primarily concerned with that, but, I also have to spend considerable class time teaching physics and math, so I'm interested in good books to help with that as well.

I'm thinking about some Forrest Mims type books for beginner circuit work, but I haven't opened one in years; so, if any of you know anything like it, please let me know.

Turtle Geometry, The Art of Electronics 2nd ed, The Art of Electronics 3rd when available, The Engineering Handbook, Second Edition, CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, Ugly's Electrical Reference, The Pocket Reference by Thomas Glover, The Mythical Man-Month, K&R, The Pragmatic Programmer

Pyzdek's guide to SPC - I'd like to find a nice short treatment of statistics and SPC, Pyzdek's is had to get hold of these days. Maybe there's a better one now.

Some PG, Some Joel Spoolsky, ???

Anything else that might stimulate some interest in the subject matter, or otherwise help students, be it directly related or not.

8 comments

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jberryman
I just got "an embedded software primer" by david e. Simon and absolutely love it so far.

Depending on how much your course is oriented to electronics vs. the programming side of things, it may not be appropriate, but the first few chapters are about hardware and signals. If the class is built around playing with arduino,say, I think it would be great.

fnordfnordfnord
I have several courses. We're heavy on the hardware side of things; but, I teach one course that is basically a K&R course for all practical purposes. Thanks for posting.
[dead] neckpunch
You've already mentioned the Mims notebooks, which I think are at the top of my list. But I also think the Evil Genius guides are pretty fun and enlightening. For programming, I like Mastering Algorithms with C, Mastering Algorithms with Perl, Joe Armstrong's Programming Erlang, and Mark Pilgrim's Dive into Python.

Mind me asking where in South Texas? Austin here. I have quite a few technical books lying around and plenty of colleagues who likely do as well.

keiferski
I highly recommend Getting Started in Electronics by Mims. It's widely considered a classic for getting kids/young people interested in electricity.
fnordfnordfnord
The more I think about it. The more I think I'll just get the Mims collection.
iqster
May I suggest you take a look at Make: Electronics, Making things talk, and Making things see. The Make folks also have a set of smaller books: Getting Started With Arduino, Getting Started with Processing, etc. These books are written in a very accessible manner (though not necessarily comprehensive).