Why Learn Basic Electronics? [video]
Discrete electronic components (resistors, capacitors, transistors, simple ICs and sensors, etc) are sort of the "assembly language" of electronics, but the vast majority of programmers never touch assembly.<p>There have been attempts to create higher level abstractions (like Arduino "shields", etc) but the cost (time and money) to produce reusable modules is huge relative to the cost of the components, whereas CPUs are so fast the overhead of higher level languages and function calls is usually insignificant.<p>I'm not sure what the solution is. Maybe better software, and methods of manufacturing small runs of boards?