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AdobiWanKenobion Ask HN: How do I learn robotics in 2025?

Don't do a degree or two like I did. Just build shit, get yourself a 3D printer and some electronics, and again just build shit.

The only maths you'll need at the beginning is basic control engineering (PID Loops), forward/inverse kinematics and Extended Kalman Filtering. The only other thing is maybe V=IR, anything else and you're just placating some professor's ego.

AdobiWanKenobion Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

I mean £21k student stipend and job prospects of £26k-£42k (assuming not finance or AI) can you blame them.

AdobiWanKenobion How do non-software engineers feel upon reflection, about their degrees?

>Hot take: CE is a better foundation for programming than CS

Not at my uni for sure. First (and only) microcontroller that we actually programmed that wasnt an arduino was in the final semester of the entire degree.

AdobiWanKenobion How do non-software engineers feel upon reflection, about their degrees?

Outside of the dissertation no not really. Best we did was in the group projects where at most we attached a couple sensors and maybe a motor to an arduino.

*Technically I did a robotics degree but the difference between mine and the EE degree at my university was at the most 5 modules, roughly 60 out of 360 credits.

The replacement modules certainly were not in anything to do with design or fabrication either. No soldering, no CAD, no ECAD.

You could have got through the entire degree without having once picked up a soldering iron or built a circuit. As long as you were good at maths you would get through, nothing else meaningfully mattered, except the dissertation of course.

AdobiWanKenobion How do non-software engineers feel upon reflection, about their degrees?

I will self-teach of course, my issue is why do I have to do it from absolute scratch if I literally have a degree in the field.

AdobiWanKenobion How do non-software engineers feel upon reflection, about their degrees?

>But university isn’t about leaning to uses tool and apply it somewhere else, it’s about the underlying concepts and the people you get exposed to.

You’re not wrong at all on the software side. With regards to the concepts though, we did a whole bunch of theory, but fairly often we did not do even the basics of applying it. I mean we literally did not do any, we did zero circuit/PCB design (the thing I’m trying to currently learn).

AdobiWanKenobion How do non-software engineers feel upon reflection, about their degrees?

>Have you tried using an Arduino or similar first?

That’s why I went to uni to do EE/Robotics. I wanted the next step, suffice to say I did not get the next step from university.

I see what you’re getting at though. Just in time learning seems to be the way it will be. It’s just frustrating I don’t even have a base to go off of. Pretty much all my background knowledge has come from stuff I learnt outside of uni.

AdobiWanKenobion How do non-software engineers feel upon reflection, about their degrees?

I didn't add the Ask HN thing, my bad. I'm still getting used to the site.