Just have an AI make a video out of it, I guess.

Replace the manpage with a tiktok clone. Every video clip is a different section of the manpage. /s

Okay I'm building this.

Because it told you so!

I am reminded of the passage in Umberto Eco's _Foucault's Pendulum_ where they reconstruct a particularly wild weekend for a Templar based on the rule of the Templars and the idea that a rule exists because it's something people do.

Fresh produce is pretty inexpensive here for the most part. But fresh herbs (like thyme, not a euphemism) are sold in small quantities (15g-20g) in plastic clamshell packaging in groceries for $2-$4 each.

You don’t need a $900 gadget to grow fresh herbs, either, of course. But that’s one way you could think of it “recouping” the capital.

yeah, calories are cheap: grow for flavour/value.

In a backyard 5gal/19l bucket, I could get 3lbs/1.5kg of potatoes or 3lbs/1.5kg of cherry tomatoes. The latter is a better deal.

You can turn almost all of those buttons off in the settings and save it as a template. The only complaint I ever got was from somone who wanted to use the highlighter instead of the built-in comment management system.

There's another updated version of that prolog here along with some links, including an archived article from Microsoft Research on how it was (once upon a time) used in Windows NT network configuration: https://github.com/opless/small-prolog

You can catch it with a footprint review. List all your new footprints or old footprints assigned to new parts, and have someone else check them against the datasheets. Or if you ever have the good fortune to work with a very good layout designer, they will check things like that for you just to catch you out.

I've seen such things pass through multiple layers of review. It's the kind of thing everyone knows to look for but takes a lot of effort to catch.

"Can" does not mean "always will without fail". On the flip side, you will never catch things in review if you don't review.

Having a specific review for new parts helps to keep footprint errors from "passing through". I've never seen a general layout review catch a footprint error: if you're used to using internal library parts, no one thinks to check them.

Altium has taken over a lot of small to medium sized shops. Mostly because the price is right for its capability. It also has a history of being the least bad compromise between the odd mixtures of excellence and user-hostility Cadence and Mentor tend to come up with, going back to the Protel days, and they've done a good job in the last decade+ of marketing it to those shops. Cadence and Siemens nee Mentor (and maybe Zuken? I've never seen Zuken in the wild, but it always makes these lists) have been neglecting the entry level and smaller organizations and aggressively trying to move their customers to their higher tier offerings during that time. But while it's Altium's flagship product, it is not top tier. It is really entry-level for a professional PCB-level design package, like PADS and OrCAD as opposed to Xpedition and Allegro.

There are many. What's your (computing) platform and what are you trying to simulate? The more professional tools (beginning with freebies like LTspice) are oriented around letting you probe waveforms from simulated inputs and are not as oriented towards interactive probing "does this LED light when I press that button?" as a hobbyist might want.

Thanks. I prefer Mac (maybe preferring online these days though). I do a lot of analog stuff with op-amps lately (analog computing).

I'm breadboarding with physical breadboards but they get messy/cluttered fast, ha ha.

I thought so. I'm a fan of Glider.

I personally reach for LTspice from Analog Devices first even if I have better available - it is quick, easy enough to use, and someone has ported the model you need to it already. There is a Mac version on their web site but I have never used it.

Micro-Cap is free-as-in-free-beer but windows-native and will do stability analysis (gain margin/phase margin).

Qucs-S + the backend simulator of your choice is probably your best bet for free software on Mac. Original Qucs is still developed (checkins last month on their github, if you want to try building from source) but hasn't had a release in almost ten years. QucsStudio is now uSimmics and is closed-source and Windows-native. They all have their peculiar uses. I haven't used any of them much.

Online you can use PartsQuest Explore for free for public designs and short simulation runs. I have not used the online version much but it is basically the very powerful Siemens (Mentor) VHDL-AMS simulator that has gone by a number of names (Mentor never commits to names) on the backend. I have used that: it came with PADS Standard Plus. It surprisingly does just about everything at least usably well. It can use spice models or VHDL-A(MS) models. It can use RF s-parameter models. It can use control-theory laplace-transform block models. It will do stability analysis and monte carlo analysis. It can run VHDL models. You can model just about anything you can write the ODEs for in VHDL-AMS: try viewing source on their motor model for example. You won't get the filter synthesis or analysis tools you'll find in a dedicated RF simulator like Keysight Pathwave. You won't get the controls design and analysis tools in the Matlab/Simulink toolkits. But it does a whole heck of a lot.

Better simulators can do parameter sweeps and monte carlo simulations so you can explore tolerance stackup issues. But most of the failure modes you've listed there are just why you shouldn't build your circuits for one on breadboards and for another with dodgy parts sourced outside of distribution channels.