As someone who teaches electronics my experience is that analogies (including the hydraulic one) are immensely helpful to students as long as they understand them as analogies. I always tend to say, that in reality one has to look closely at transfer curves and formulae, but this would be true for actual hydraulics as well.
My goal in the use of analogies is to give them a basic "if there is more of that, there must be less of this"-kind of intuition. This is a really, really useful skill that helps you in practise, because you will automatically do a double-check if you miscalculate or if the result doesn't fit your intuition (and thus sharpening it).
After understanding the basic systemic relationships one can go and have a more accurate look, but depending on who we are talking about and what they want to achieve that might not be needed.
Many electronic calculations could also be done on a deeper physical level, which would be more accurate, but also much more expensive to calculate. This is not practical for the typical electrical engineer, which is why they go for the simplified calculations.
Similarily there are amateur tinkerers which will be able to do most of what they want by relying mostly on analogies and that is okay as well. The math is there if you wanna go deeper as an amateur, just as physics is there if you wanna go even deeper as an electrical engineer.
That being said the analogy also serves a purpose for the electrical engineer. Everything is quicker if you intuitively know that voltage has to rise at point x and less current goes through point y etc. Sometimes you don't even need to know how much
My goal in the use of analogies is to give them a basic "if there is more of that, there must be less of this"-kind of intuition. This is a really, really useful skill that helps you in practise, because you will automatically do a double-check if you miscalculate or if the result doesn't fit your intuition (and thus sharpening it).
After understanding the basic systemic relationships one can go and have a more accurate look, but depending on who we are talking about and what they want to achieve that might not be needed.
Many electronic calculations could also be done on a deeper physical level, which would be more accurate, but also much more expensive to calculate. This is not practical for the typical electrical engineer, which is why they go for the simplified calculations.
Similarily there are amateur tinkerers which will be able to do most of what they want by relying mostly on analogies and that is okay as well. The math is there if you wanna go deeper as an amateur, just as physics is there if you wanna go even deeper as an electrical engineer.
That being said the analogy also serves a purpose for the electrical engineer. Everything is quicker if you intuitively know that voltage has to rise at point x and less current goes through point y etc. Sometimes you don't even need to know how much