alt Hacker NewsAh how things have changed. When I was learning electronics we mainly dealt with radio and TV circuits and just about the first lesson one learned was to keep leads short (reduce unwanted inductance) and use decoupling capacitors everywhere.
I recall some years later a young graduate engineer coming into my office with a rather involved circuit consisting of 30/40 TTL ICs and complaining that he'd double checked the circuit and it still didn't work. I took one look at his device then went to the draws of capacitors and handed him a handful of 0.1uF ceramic caps and told him to put them between the ICs' PS rail pins to ground which he did and to his amazement the circuit worked immediately.
He stood in amazement that I should have such insight so as to fix the problem at first glance.
How such critical knowledge can get lost in university training these days just amazes me.
I can see how that happens when people come at things from a conceptual digital side first.
It probably doesn't help when you have a circuit diagram that while topologically correct doesn't show the relative positioning between components. The first time I saw all the decoupling caps rendered in a single chain on the side of the diagram I was mightily confused. It seemed like utter nonsense until I realised where they actually went.