Re: [LUG] CoderDojo Plymouth

When I was first involved with making my own hardware and software, it was in a computer club in the late 1970âs/early 1980âs. There were several models of computer around, a lot of them kit built and customised.

Some were built to a price, all were variously capable, mostly dictated by how new the design was â it was a fast evolving market.

Nobody said âyou must use this model hardware, or this O.S. itâs bestâ. We all helped each other understand what we had, and built bits for them, some quite extensive bits. It fostered a healthy, inquisitive, friendly environment several times a week, in the pub, our shed, and youth club.

It provided a brilliant place for challenges and fostered ideas and intellects and helped them grow.

It wasnât, and isnât important how applicable the technology was/is to modern systems, it never will be. To compare an Arduino to a Cray is obviously ridiculous. But once you understand the first, you begin to see how the second might work, and whether you might like to work in that sector.

What it did was to provide a fertile environment to enable the basic, simple hardware and software to be understood, so that one day it could flourish so that the modern, advanced stuff could be too.

Itâs NOT important what hardware youâre using Arduino, Pi, Microbit, Android, or whatever. It IS important that you use SOMETHING simple and cheap with good, multi-source Support availability to start out from. Indeed I would question the validity of any club only using one hardware platform; having several enables the participants to make their own decision on what they want to try based on their own evaluation. It HAS to be cheap and simple so that when you kill it through ignorance or accident, you donât have to get a bank loan to replace it. It HAS to be simple and cheap so that itâs easy to achieve making it do something rewarding relatively soon. It HAS to be versatile so that that âsomethingâ can be as simple as flashing an l.e.d. or as complicated as sending an S.M.S. text.

NO, these devices wonât make you good programmers or master hardware designers, theyâre not intended to be!!!!! Theyâre intended to be easy and cheap to learn, with some extended lifespan for a lot more complicated and diverse projects if required. Treat them as such, and have some patience and understanding for those people who want to take the first steps to learning a new skill without having to read hundreds of pages of User Manual and/or buy hundreds of pounds worth of hardware. They can do that in a few years when they know what they want.

Try to remember how you once didnât have a clue how electronics and/or software worked, and how you learned.

Everyone has to start somewhere, at the bottom and it can be difficult, so small easy steps at first are important. The hardware isnât and neither is the software.