Reddit reviews Printed Circuit Board Design Techniques for EMC Compliance: A Handbook for Designers

yes, no, maybe?

It really depends on the type of circuit. For low frequency circuits like audio opamp circuits, or microcontrollers running at a few megahertz, it probably won't matter much. If you are switching high currents at high speed then you could run into problems. e.g. PWM controller for a motor, or LEDs.

Doing ground and VCC pours can mask problems because you lose sight of where your return signals paths are going. If you never need to put tracks on the bottom of the PCB then it's not so bad, but if you put tracks on the bottom of the PCB then you will start to break up the ground pour, potentially into isolated islands and bottlenecks.

If you solely rely on a ground pour you might not realise that one of the high frequency/current return paths goes all around the board.

You really should consider each Net individually and prioritise it based on current and frequency.

Do some reading on AC and DC PCB design.

https://www.maximintegrated.com/en/design/technical-documents/tutorials/5/5450.html

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Printed-Circuit-Design-Techniques-Compliance/dp/0780353765 - this is a good book for learning PCB design, and you can often find a PDF to download if you look hard enough.

Here's a question: from the point of view of PCB design, what's the difference between a 1MHz sine wave and a 1MHz square wave?

EDIT: search for "high speed PCB design" and you'll get articles which might help to explain it. You probably don't need to know the maths but try and get a general understanding of why you might do certain things on a PCB layout.

http://www.ti.com/lit/an/scaa082a/scaa082a.pdf

http://home.iitb.ac.in/~pradeepsarin/students/tether/generalectronicsfundaes/EMCPCB.pdf

http://www.elmac.co.uk/Lord_of_the_board.pdf

>I'm sorry but I'm skeptical about your qualifications.

As you should be. Luckily, this link outlines the theory sufficiently, so you don't have to.

>And you missed one very important word. Try again:

I ignored this because there is nothing special about airplane electronics that would warrant a distinction from regular electronics for the sake of this discussion. There is a distinction between the standards airplane electronics are held to vs. consumer, but the electronics themselves are equally subject to physics and the electromagnetic spectrum.

>Spoiler: It doesn't.

Yours might not, but what about the Chinese counterfeit version the guy next to you bought off ebay for half the price? You bet your ass that device isn't up to spec.

Or what about the condition you happened to uncover for the first time, that just couldn't be anticipated in any tests? This stuff is very difficult to predict, and is often times referred to as "black magic" in the industry for this reason. Look at this book description title on the topic:

PCB Design Techniques for EMC Compliance:

"Electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) is an engineering discipline often identified as "black magic." This belief exists because the fundamental mechanisms on how radio frequency (RF) energy is developed within a printed circuit board (PCB) is not well understood by practicing engineers."

It is incredibly arrogant of you to think you can intuition your way around this topic. Certainly not the trait of a skeptic.