Oh definitely, I've done my fair share of Digi-Key orders too. The lack of a good actual-local-physical-store option for that one missing resistor on a Saturday is a little unfortunate though.
I do wonder what the overall trend is. I mean, it's certainly harder to build anything close to "state of the art" in miniaturization without having a custom PCB fabbed and soldering SMT. And it seems with all the premade building blocks (Arduino shields and such) fewer people would actually need to design from scratch. Also our idea of what's "interesting" has shifted a bit... the radio receiver and burglar alarm and amplifier kits I built as a kid (in the 90's) might not be be as exciting today. But then maybe the maker movement brings an influx of new experimenters regardless. Awesome if so.
And I also don't do hardware hobbyist stuff much anymore so I'm inclined to take your word for it if low-level circuit hacking really is getting popular again :-)
I do wonder what the overall trend is. I mean, it's certainly harder to build anything close to "state of the art" in miniaturization without having a custom PCB fabbed and soldering SMT. And it seems with all the premade building blocks (Arduino shields and such) fewer people would actually need to design from scratch. Also our idea of what's "interesting" has shifted a bit... the radio receiver and burglar alarm and amplifier kits I built as a kid (in the 90's) might not be be as exciting today. But then maybe the maker movement brings an influx of new experimenters regardless. Awesome if so.
And I also don't do hardware hobbyist stuff much anymore so I'm inclined to take your word for it if low-level circuit hacking really is getting popular again :-)