As I said I would rather learn things by doing rather than starting >off with only extensive electronics laws and theory.
So would everybody. But it doesn't work that way. You can't smell electric current. You can't see a transistor work. As such, you're completely dependent upon instrumentation, which is something of a mystery in itself.
You will occasionally find people who appear to have learned electronics by just connecting devices on a workbench, but these guys have an instinct for circuitry that most of us do not. The rest of us have to learn the stuff out of a book and confirm it in our minds with laboratory exercises. The lab exercises also teach us to use the instruments and to become acquainted with various sorts of hardware.
Some electrical behavior is fairly intuitive: if you increase the current through a lamp, it'll get brighter. But some phenomena are counter-intuitive: you'll find AC voltages across capacitors and inductors that are higher than your source voltage. (This is how a lot of 'free energy' schemes get started.)
There is, unfortunately, no easy way to learn electronics. If you try to do it without going into the theory, you'll remain stuck a low level where you're connecting parts without understanding why. Then you'll drift off into software and the electronics that makes it all work will remain a mystery.
M Kinsler
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