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Comment by TFortunato | Hacker News Reader

Former Analog Devices employee here. I used to write programs and that collected all of the data for the data sheets. We would take all of these complex measurements on a part in just seconds using some pretty fancy test equipment. It definitely taught me a lot / inspired me to learn more about programming as a a fresh-out-of-school EE

Definitely happy to see some data sheet love ..chip companies are definitely in a whole different world when it comes to documentation, compared to the software world I'm now in!

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Analog Devices' datasheets and application notes taught me so much I didn't learn formally, especially in regards to circuit design in real-world conditions. On the average, they're a real pleasure to read and, generally, you can tell people who actually used the parts to build things had direct input into the datasheet design and layout. As you contributed to that, thank you for making this hobbyist's life better and less stressful. I can only hope Analog Devices permits their staff to publish more about their process for designing, building, and maintaining documentation as they do.

I'll double check if there was anything interesting about how we did documentation lying around. One thing I did want to point out if you like the application notes, is you definitely owe it to yourself to check out the companies tech journal Analog Dialogue

Yes they will try to point out interesting parts they make, but it's like the next level beyond the application notes and a great way to see some practical designs and applications of analog circuit theory in the real world.

https://www.analog.com/en/analog-dialogue

The "rarely asked questions" archive usually has some fun ideas in it, like a white noise generator based on johnson noise from a resistor (https://www.analog.com/en/analog-dialogue/raqs/raq-issue-154...), or a signal chain for doing analog measurements on a single GPIO pin on an FPGA, complete with verilog code (https://www.analog.com/en/analog-dialogue/raqs/raq-issue-169...)

Awesome! :)

That's awesome! I learned a ton about buck regulators from the ADP3050 datasheet [1]. The rest I know about switching regulators, I learned from the LT3757A [2] (now the same company of course). I built a 20V to 190V boost regulator at the very edge of capabilities of the LT3757A for a nixie tube clock project -- that learned me an awful lot haha, in particular that next time I'll be using a flyback topology.

[1] https://www.analog.com/media/en/technical-documentation/data...

[2] https://www.analog.com/media/en/technical-documentation/data...

Fellow boost supply designer here. The problem I always had with flyback is that you can't get an off-the-shelf transformer. How would you solve that? Wind your own?

I really like coilcraft, which isn't stocked at DigiKey so you might never hear of them if you look there first. They have a lot of winding options and I think even their custom winding parts are reasonably priced.

I was under the impression you could use off-the-shelf transformers, at least some of the time [1] but I don't know what I'm doing ^_^

[1] https://www.coilcraft.com/edu/flyback_transformer.cfm

"..chip companies are definitely in a whole different world when it comes to documentation, compared to the software world I'm now in!"

Makes sense though. SW is a much more agile/faster iterations artifact than HW. Documentation is very hard to keep pace in this env, so much so that people are actually trying to infer it automatically from the -ever changing- code.

Your wording shows the difference very well: ~"Documentation that we have to keep updating" vs. "datasheet" (a specification).

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