That's weird. Every ECE course I took talked about current flow. We only ever touched on electrons when the physical process of doping a semiconductor was discussed. Cathode ray tubes were covered in physics class.

But yeah, when you're manipulating a beam of electrons, keeping track of how many electrons on which plate makes a lot of sense, but that seems to be limit case where the "current of holes" model breaks down.

What country did you train in? In my EE education, everything was about current, not electrons. EEs don't normally care about electrons, they care about the flow of charge.

I've done college, undergrad, and post-grad to PhD in EEE and they always define current as positive charge flow rather then electron flow.

I graduated with an Electrical Engineering degree 46 years ago and "conventional current flow" was ubiquitous except on specifically discussing physical elements like CRTs or doped semiconductors - which was only a fraction of what we covered.

You have to pick one, but then you have to ensure that all the materials you're working with agree, just like imperial vs metric measurements.

But I'm not convinced that it helps, outside of semiconductors and tubes, because it can lead to a whole category of misconceptions. I see it come up reasonably frequently:

https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/245610/is-vo...

https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/139327/elect...

https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/490021/how-i...

https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/288248/if-el...

If you're taking a top-down or phenomenological approach, best to just start from observing that there is a property called "current" which has magnetic and thermal observable effects and quantifying from there.

I have heard that when transistors were new, there were a bunch of people claiming the theory behind them was nonsense because it treated current in p-doped semiconductors as a flow of positive charges (holes.) (These were not physicists - mostly hobbyists, some electricians and maybe a few EEs.)

Once you get to capacitors, inductors, transmission lines and antennas, you are no longer just considering electrons, but also fields (usually via classical approximations to the underlying QED.) In electrolytes, you have both positive and negative ions...

IMO, the ideal is to:

1. Discuss the simplified EE model. The diode with 0.7 forward voltage is the best example, its highly unrealistic, but its also highly useful. ("Reality" is closer to an exponential function, at least at that region of voltage vs current)

2. Discuss that most EE models are unrealistic, but useful. (Vce saturation, MOSFET voltage-controlled transconductor, etc. etc.). EE is filled with _completely_ wrong, but highly useful models. My favorite has to be the "virtual short circuit" model of OpAmps / negative feedback. (OpAmp analysis technique where you simply set the + and - leads of the OpAmp to the same voltage)

3. Have a brief (but not overwhelming), discussion of Maxwell's Equations, which is a more accurate model, but useless in most of EE. Discuss radios and transmission lines (two situations where we have to start leaning into Maxwell's Equations for understanding), but also discuss their simplified models. (Ex: Impedance matched antenna is "just a resistor").

4. Return to the mantra of EE. The entire point of EE is to simplify circuits and simplify models. Its fine to be wrong, as long as the circuit works at the end of the day. It is highly useful to think in the wrong manner on a wide variety of subjects. (Diodes, BJT transistor voltage drops, Simplified OpAmps / negative feedback models). And only use complicated analysis on the cases that you recognize as "worthy" of deeper analysis. (Antennas, Transmission Line Theory, etc. etc.)

5. And now, teach the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumped-element_model

Yes, the operation of cathode ray tubes is an area of physics where the analogy breaks and talking about particles is useful. Which is exactly what parent post said.

Literally all of regular circuit analysis does not obey this convention. I think maybe this post is pedantic more than is useful.

Did you study electronics engineering or electrical engineering? In my experience the former (dealing with semiconductors and integrated circuits etc.) uses electron flow but the latter (designing power transmission and induction motors and transformers etc.) almost universally uses conventional current (then again they mostly deal with AC anyway so maybe it's less important.)