Analog Circuit Design

What Hacker News says

1. floxyMay 2025
   >It'd be fun to have a book of tricks from this era.

   I think you'll get a kick out of:

   "Analog Circuit Design: Art, Science and Personalities"

   https://www.amazon.com/Analog-Circuit-Design-Personalities-E...

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2. gotaquestionMar 2022
   The toxicity on this site still amazes me. We have people here claiming, "It's only English, would never fly with engineering." How horrendously dismissive and arrogant an attitude. As if engineering is some god-like holy discipline that sorts the "real" students from the "fake" ones. This professor makes many valid points, and I think it would be entirely applicable to engineering. It's like you never analyzed an op-amp? That is a scalable demonstration of knowledge, that can be critiqued and revised.

   Circuit design is more an art than a science, that's why two of the most popular non-textbooks on the topic are called:

   "Analog Circuit Design: Art, Science, and Personalities" - Williams

   "The Art of Electronics" - Horowitz and Hill

   Get over yourselves.

   EDIT: If you read these two books, they focus on the highly subjective nature of analog design, and how multiple designs can still meet the design criteria, but have a certain elegance about them that is an expressive quality of personality. The same could be said about source code, in that an experienced programmer can deliver creative alternatives to the most naive solution that solves the problem. Sure, it is important to learn that 1+1=2 (or 11, depending on '+'), but the same can be said of English, where spelling and grammar matter, and mistakes can be just as deadly as Metric vs Imperial.

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3. staycoolboyJun 2020
   This is my favorite circuit book:

   https://www.amazon.com/Analog-Circuit-Design-Personalities-E...

   It is written from zen-level experts in a very ELI5 way. The examples start off with a naive approach, and step by step explain how they were improved, in some cases over decades.

   Plus it focuses on how analog really is an art. Circuits have so many competing design parameters, and the canvas is so wide open, that it really takes a different kind of brain to approach the problem. This book gives a peak into that process in a comical, light-hearted way.

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4. 0xff00ffeeJan 2020
   Thanks for the link. Looking forward to reading it. I first learned about Jim Williams when I bought a book called Analog Circuit Design from the EDN press. He edited most of the book, but it is a collection of beliefs, values and attitudes around Analog Design by like-minded folks. It's equal parts educational and humorous.
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5. madengrMay 2019
   This book is good:https://www.amazon.com/Analog-Circuit-Design-Personalities-E...
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6. HeyLaughingBoyJun 2020
   My canonical answer to this question for the last 2 decades+ has been The Radio Amateur's Handbook. It will take you from zero to basic electronics with a healthy dose of radio theory and it is eminently approachable. I haven't read an edition in years, so I don't know how much it's changed. My recommendation would be the pre 1995 editions. Usually easy to find at libraries, but not these days...

   I think I also have this book https://www.amazon.com/Analog-Circuit-Design-Personalities-E...

   Or some other similar book from Jim Williams. It's not as much about electronics as it is about the engineers who came up with interesting ideas and designs.

   Which brings up another idea: google Analog Devices Analog Dialog. They put out this newsletter for like 50 years and it pretty much tells the history of precision analog design.

   Yeah, I'm paid to program, but I'm still an old school analog circuit design pretender at heart :-)

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