> what fraction of web programmers understand transistor physics?
I'm not an engineer, but I imagine that even most professional electrical/electronic engineers do not understand transistor physics in full details. In engineering, a transistor is essentially treated as a blackbox, and its behavior is described and approximated by various small-signal and large-signal models (i.e. treated as a lumped component), with their parameters characterized empirically by vendors through experiments. How exactly things work at atomic or quantum level is essentially for a transistor to work, yet, a subject of study unrelated to electrical engineering.
On the other hand, I imagine there is no shortage of EEs who have studied a physics major, or EEs with a background of semiconductor physics - they can understand transistor physics really well.
So we can say the relation between EE and transistor physics sounds a lot similar to mathematicians and logicians, it's a good analogy.
I'm not an engineer, but I imagine that even most professional electrical/electronic engineers do not understand transistor physics in full details. In engineering, a transistor is essentially treated as a blackbox, and its behavior is described and approximated by various small-signal and large-signal models (i.e. treated as a lumped component), with their parameters characterized empirically by vendors through experiments. How exactly things work at atomic or quantum level is essentially for a transistor to work, yet, a subject of study unrelated to electrical engineering.
On the other hand, I imagine there is no shortage of EEs who have studied a physics major, or EEs with a background of semiconductor physics - they can understand transistor physics really well.
So we can say the relation between EE and transistor physics sounds a lot similar to mathematicians and logicians, it's a good analogy.