Hail Romanian analog engineers

EDN contributor Drew Wilson just filed an interesting story about Romania. What caught my eye was this:

Communist-era Romania had a strong top-down engineering focus. But as the open world embraced the digital revolution and engineering students dropped analog for digital, closed Romania was forced to stay in the analog world. Universities emphasized analog expertise and that's paying some dividends today. "West Europe universities do not focus on analog," Simonis says.

Well, well, from passed-over to hot property. I too was wooed by all my pals beck in the 1980s to “go digital”. Since I played guitar and had designed a few amplifier circuits as well as those bucket-brigade reverb circuits I was more interested in analog. They told me I would be begging in the streets with a tin cup. Well how the world has changed. Digital engineers are a dime a dozen and even those positions are being outsourced to India. Meanwhile analog is the high-paying exclusive domain of great people like Barry Harvey and Bob Pease and a host of others, many of whom contribute to EDN. I am editing an article from Jim Williams for later this year, wait till you see this one—analog is so cool it makes my teeth hurt.

So welcome our Romanian analog brothers and sisters. Hail and a hearty fare thee well, for you are part of an exclusive and proud tradition.