I was never a fan of the Maker Movement. While it did get people to tinker, there was always this massive gap between lighting up an LED and using EEPROM, JTAG debugging, interrupts, and even designing some of the more intricate circuit designs to pull of intermediate projects. I found that there were people who knew how to do that stuff and the rest just trying to get by.
The last time I used Arduino, I ended up just coding the bare metal out of necessity for the things I was trying to do. Some functionality of the chips was literally not accessible unless you break out of the sandbox. But then I wondered why we didn't just get people set up without shielding them so much from what it actually takes to do embedded development. Ultimately, the failure of the Maker Movement to me is that there is not an upgrade path. You start blinking LEDs and then what? Thus, lots of people end up being eternal beginners, which I don't think is helpful.
To some extent I agree that the upgrade path is lacking. I recently helped a friend move out of the ino file model into building regular c++ applications because his design was getting pretty complicated. Once he realized that he knew more of c++ than he thought he did, it was a game changer for him.
At the same time, people have done some pretty amazing stuff using the Arduino platform without knowing how to use the things you mention. What you call eternal beginners have accomplished a lot. James Bruton does some pretty impressive robotics work using Arduino.
> To some extent I agree that the upgrade path is lacking.
You began an inappropriate chain of comments by being uncharitable in your initial interpretation of my sentiment. People piled on emotionally as a direct result of your opening sentence even though your second one confirms what I said.
> I was never a fan of the Maker Movement. While it did get people to tinker, there was always this massive gap between lighting up an LED and using EEPROM, JTAG debugging, interrupts, and even designing some of the more intricate circuit designs to pull of intermediate projects. I found that there were people who knew how to do that stuff and the rest just trying to get by.
Intense gatekeeping in the electronics community is precisely why communities such as Arduino could flourish in the first place (and their creators could benefit financially). Ultimately, people just want to get stuff done and Arduino is a way of doing it. If you go to Stack Exchange, someone will tell you to buy a college textbook and come back in six months once you understand Laplace transforms. An artist working on an installation doesn't need that. A person building an automated cat feeder doesn't need that. In fact, almost no one does, it's just something we torture EE students with.
I think a lot of the negativity toward Arduino boils down to saying "nooo, it's supposed to be hard!". But if you want the Arduino crowd to get more interested in your field of expertise, you need to build them a ramp, not to tell them they're not real electrical engineers.
You talk about gatekeeping, when most people don't know the difference between git and GitHub, making your first PR is difficult if you have never done it, navigating a repo to look for your first change is difficult. And yet the status quo is that people should just figure that out.
You also talk about gatekeeping when in the many makerspaces I have been to, there are always highly experienced people who tinker on their own terms but rarely pay it forward, meaning they keep their knowledge. The reason for this is due to the often anarchist structure of maker spaces. Things happen if they do.
Sometimes there is an organized class. Most of the times, not. So you come in every week and people are just sitting around talking about the rules of keeping the space clean and when dues are due.
The concept of the hacker space and maker space is great. The execution leaves a lot to be desired. I consider it a 1.0 of a technical movement.
Look at any hobby and there are lots of beginners and casuals and far fewer people who are very skilled at it. The Maker hobby is no different. It's certainly not a problem of the microcontrollers available. Arduino is the simplest, but there are plenty of others.
The "blinky LED" roadblock is really just a result of the fact that more complex "maker" projects require some amount of electrical or engineering or fabrication knowledge and skill, which takes some trial and error and practice -- the same thing that limits progress in lots of other hobbies.
The real "Maker" movement is the demand that drives so many consumer level fabrication tools and components that were only available as expensive industrial and commercial orders in the past -- 3d printers, laser cutters, microcontrollers, IC sensors, brushless motors -- there are so many options now that just weren't available at all 20 years ago.
I agree with the outcome of increased fabrication tools availability.
Yet, when the intent is that the population is to be empowered democratically to wield these tools, there needs to be a better pedagogical culture in the communities.
I cannot believe the amount of people replying who seem to think that having a path to improvement is gatekeeping. How are people supposed to actually use these tools to make greater than novelty-level changes in their lives and communities?
The price of Arduino has not only been going up and up, but there have been IP disputes over the years. At the same time, you can get chips for pennies on the dollar. People in this thread are lamenting the possible demise of Arduino, when like Cloudflare, like Github, and like so many other things, they should have never been so invested into a single player.
The result of Arduino going away should be "Ah, it is a sad day that one of our many choices of accessible boards is going away. let's make sure the other ones are robust against that same fate and keep creating with our remaining tools."
Instead, the conversation is "How dare that big corp change the terms and conditions on our only hobby option!"
I certainly see a structural and cultural problem here.
I'm not a fan because, pedagogically, the structure of how it played out never allowed or helped people actually advance in the craft of it. There are better ways to build a tinker culture where people actually improve over time towards what an experienced EE and such can do. I rarely saw that progression.
What happens as a result of this is that someone spends a lot of time tinkering and then they think they know what they are doing. With that confidence, they might apply for a job or take on a more dangerous project. The job will say they don't actually have the skill, even though they have been putting in the time. And the overconfidence could lead to trying to do more dangerous things than they should on projects.
A tinkering culture is fine, but it needs to have safety and skill progression as its foundation. Most Maker Spaces I have been to have done a good job trying to keep things safe, but ultimately, people are people.
"Approaching" means to go towards the skillset. A home chef can develop better knife skills when cutting vegetables. That is approaching being a more professional cook, yet it does not mean the person could work in a restaurant. Maybe they could. We're talking about asymptotic.
If you are having understanding this distinction, then that is the exact point I am making about the Maker Movement. It is accepted that people progress if they do, and if they don't, then tough. There is a balance between perpetual tinkering, some sort of progression culture, and a full on degree.
Why must they “progress”? Why can’t people have hobbies? If they finish their blinky LED project and decide that’s enough investment into the hobby, why is that a problem?
Think about how many thousands have purchased a musical instrument only to abandon the hobby after a few months. Is that a failure of music-as-a-hobby or just humans being humans?
Most people I know who get into electronics as a hobby aren’t looking at it as a potential career. Myself included! This is the most absurd take I’ve seen all day.
I don't think Arduino users need to worry too much about safety. Obviously, don't build hobby projects that put lives on the line, but otherwise they're pretty harmless.
Who says a tinkering culture needs to have skill progression? Maybe people just like to tinker. Maybe simple things are still useful.
The Maker Movement is more than just Arduino coding. Some of these maker spaces have full-on donated Kuka robots or other heavy equipment with minimal safety mechanisms in place other than "be careful".
> I'm not a fan because, pedagogically, the structure of how it played out never allowed or helped people actually advance in the craft of it. There are better ways to build a tinker culture where people actually improve over time towards what an experienced EE and such can do. I rarely saw that progression.
I wonder how many young EEs of today can point to Arduino as their first exposure to electronics. You'll probably have a harder time finding those who don't.
As for "progression", I suppose you're disappointed that very few bicycle owners become professional cyclists.
A young EE is in a degreed program and is getting that progression formally as part of their degree. A person not in that degreed program is taking a random walk through the skills and potential mentors (if and when they exist). That's clearly the issue.
This also goes beyond programming on a microcontroller as the Maker Movement is about more than just electronics.
Yes, there is. It is called "Introduction to Microcontrollers" by Günther Gridling and Bettina Weiss from the Vienna University of Technology, written in 2007.
Unfortunately, it suffers from having a very generic name. It is short enough while going over concepts to take a person just beyond Arduino-land.
Longer answer: It's been a while since I have thought about Arduino. But last I recall, it is just an Atmega chip connected to IO. Maybe newer ones have moved to ARM M0 or beyond. That's about when I stopped using Arduino.
But it isn't hard to just start from baremetal on those. You need the user manual for the actual chip so you can configure timers and such. Once you know how to set up one chip, you can set up most any chip.
I do think there is use for a plug and play system like Arduino. It is very user friendly to just use that IDE and get started on Arduino. My critique is that there is rarely a followup progression. That followup progression is critical.
Here's a video showing how to make your own "Arduino" [1]. All the hard work is done by the Atmega chip. So Arduino has built this mythos and this IDE that it seems you have to use. It traps people and prevents them from doing the exploration into the chip itself.
Ive always just used C. From my recollection, there’s an avr libc library. There’s tutorials online for how to do it. The big thing is once you have that progression path with knowledge like that book I linked, you have a lot of freedom.
Some chips can use Micro Python or even Rust. I have not explored those myself.
The last time I used Arduino, I ended up just coding the bare metal out of necessity for the things I was trying to do. Some functionality of the chips was literally not accessible unless you break out of the sandbox. But then I wondered why we didn't just get people set up without shielding them so much from what it actually takes to do embedded development. Ultimately, the failure of the Maker Movement to me is that there is not an upgrade path. You start blinking LEDs and then what? Thus, lots of people end up being eternal beginners, which I don't think is helpful.