Op-amps as hammers

[Brisance]

Although I am a beginner, when it comes to electronics, ever since I learned about op-amps in depth I want to use them anywhere just like the only tool being a hammer analogy. Is there any downside to this syndrome of trying to do basically everything with them?

[antonis]

I suggest you to read Paul Lagargue's " The Right to Be Lazy"...

[samhay]

The only downside is that at some point you will realise that you can't quite do everything with an op-amp.
Until then, have fun.

[amptramp]

I prefer using op amps as well but in some cases, a single transistor will do the job just as well and not have limitations like frequency response or noise that some op amps have.  If all you ever use is op amps, it is possible you may be missing some of your design skills.  Op amps are used in the linear region and you have to know your way around non-linearity as well, since this is what a distortion and many other effects are about.  Also, op amps can be expensive and take more board space than a transistor.

[duck_arse]

I wanna say that this is the best thread title I've seen since the one about the poles. I was hoping it was going to take off, so I'm getting on board, just in case.

[edit, if it's not too late for the joke :] ohh, and you nailed it!

[chumbox]

I have the reverse where I try and build everything with single transistors and make my own darlingtons.  I'm yet to build my own op amp and I do love hammers. 

[R.G.]

There is a probably apocryphal story about Bruce Lee spending a lot of time learning techniques and moves from all kinds of martial arts so he could "forget them", which I took to mean subsume into the greater body of his knowledge of moves.

It's true that if the only tool you have is an opamp - or a transistor - then all your circuits will resemble the obvious answers from those genres. On the other hand, I personally try to go figure out how to usefully misuse parts - transistors as resistors, resistors as temperature sensors, LEDs as indicators and photo-optic digital input *simultaneously*, transformers as amplifiers, capacitors as input pickups, the list goes on.

I'll probably never get to (mis) use all that stuff that way, but I find pleasure in knowing I could.

Almost forgot the point of this: having learned that I could do something any of a dozen ways, I then feel no compunction about using an opamp if that's all I have or if I feel lazy. Not an issue.