Transistors (aka, the Penile iNversion Pantomime)

The most annoying and depressing failures are when stupid inconsistencies because retards can't be arsed following the same damn conventions. This can turn the simplest task into a five hour google orgy trying hopelessly to marry the wildly divergent conventions used by various self-glorified authors. Slashing at ones wrists viciously with a chainsaw is the only chance one has of remaining sane during such death like experiences.

This exact problem is the reason I found myself on a plane over the antarctic preparing to skydive without a parachute for the first time last wednesday. Transistors. They have haunted my dreams for a week now, the climax always involving me spontaneously jabbing the emitter of a scungy old PNP transistor into an important looking blood vessel and raking it along the vessel until I become covered in sticky red wetness.

The offence which caused this particular black mood was an intense confusion over the classification of transistors. I don't blame KiCad, the PCB design software I use. It was written by a chronically psychotic mental patient from western France. I can therefore understand when the five transistors in its severely limited component catalogue have completely weird and annoying names, unrelated to anything that exists in the real world. Lady Ada (www.ladyada.net) on the other hand is less excusable. As a supposedly reputable vendor of useful EE projects, one would expect its documentation to be of a high standard. I was therefore maddened beyond recovery when I found that their transistors were labelled with some useless proprietary brands' nonsense.

Searching through every conceivable source of information about transistors I drove myself to the point of sheer exhaustion and was literally about to cut my throat when I came across an answer. I found someone who had sacrificed their time in an attempt to achieve unity between the many diverse transistor categories. According to this new theory, it did not matter which bloody transistor I specified in the PCB design software. All that mattered is that I differentiated between the PNP transistors and the NPN's. See below for the gory details of how this can be easily managed.

In conclusion, I have once again traveled to hell and back again over an insanely trivial issue. Transistor manufacturers, their standards, and people who subscribe to their standards should all be shot in the kneecap immediately. The next time something this messed up happens, I'm going to save myself the massive google orgy, and just listen to the chronically psychotic mental patient from western France.

Appendix: How to differentiate PNP and NPN transistors.
All I am concerned with here, and all that matters to me, is what happens on the schematic level of the PCB. Here on the schematic level the only difference between the PNP and the NPN is the direction of the arrow on the E pin. If it's pointing in then it's a PNP. If it's not pointing inwards then it's an NPN. The following simple formula can be used as memory aids.
iN = pNp (because they both have N as the second character)
alternatively:
Pointing iN Proudly = PNP
Not Pointing iNwards = NPN
or my personal favourite:
Poking iN Pervasively = PNP
Nastily Protruding kNeecap = NPN