I've used fluid analogies for intuition, even working as a professional design engineer. It's much easier to feel flow, pressure, momentum, etc than try to develop an independent intuition based solely on equations.

I'm actually starting to learn hydraulics at the moment and it's a head trip. I know these schematic symbols must have some kind of method to them, but what. Also all of these components are just created by drilling holes in metal blocks? One simple trick manufacturers don't want you to know.

Yeah but it's only similar from a very far away. Like just simple resistor, in electronics flow increases linearly with voltage, in hydraulics it doesn't.

Or how in some hydraulics system it's not really the flow that's the motivator for action, like in simple hydraulic brakes it's not the flow of the fluid in a circle that powers anything, it's just that the push on fluid on one side pushes the brake pad on the other. So it's not really a flow but wave of pressure (which is kinda how current actually flows in the conductor anyway...)

> simple resistor, in electronics flow increases linearly with voltage, in hydraulics it doesn't

Sure. I'm not advocating substituting electronics components with a similar seeming hydraulic one and then taking it literally, but rather guiding your basic intuition. The linear resistor is actually much nicer than the nonlinear orifice when it comes time to calculate. And some times the fluid model even does a better job encouraging one to pay attention to things like parasitics, which are too easy to ignore when looking at a circuit diagram without them.

> in some hydraulics system it's not really the flow that's the motivator for action, ... it's just that the push on fluid on one side pushes the brake pad on the other

Like the gate of a common FET.