I understand and agree with what you just said. What I’m gauging is where is the praise coming from? Who has it taught, and what did they get out of it? Art of Electronics is not one book, it is three - main book, lab book, x chapters. It has taught many people how to think about circuits. It has mileage of many many years that warrants the praise. Also, it was a composition of notes from a full course that had labs, that went into a book format. Meaning its very existence came from teaching students working circuits rather than, as one might assume, “sending diagrams and formulas [their] way”. But it does seem that way if someone tries to open it for the first time. It is a slog and a half.

Take Troubleshooting Analog Circuits by Bob Pease. He throws something janky at you to see if you can intuit what could the culprits be. He then elaborates the ways in which things can go wrong. This is an introductory chapter. Many books do this, it’s not perfect but it works. It’s a book about troubleshooting that starts with asking you to troubleshoot, and then helps you to do so by explaining how and why. Hard to argue with that.

I’m not against the book, but it does seem mostly like trivia. The accompanying blog posts are insightful, though the author spends a lot of time showing how much they know rather than explaining a concept to the student - and yes, there is a difference between the two. There are a number of instances I came across of this, and other texts are better written in this regard. If I didn’t already know the stuff the author is talking about, I would need to read up another resource on it. So then what is the point? Even Dave Jones’ videos have more use because he’s right there with an oscilloscope and voltmeter to show you what’s going on. Tricks tips for “young players” etc.

Edit: I found a sample chapter of TAoE. It is much better than I remember it to be. There is a lot of useful information in here. Maybe newer edition: https://artofelectronics.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/AoE3...