On Mar 24, 2010, at 4:23 PM, M.L. wrote:

> What function do you see the Arduino serving?

It occupies the same niche as The Basic Stamp, or the BASIC52 boards  
before that, except that Arduino is cheaper, more flexible, and more  
broadly supported.

> 1. I don't know if people are actually learning anything. You seem to
> get enthusiasts who know a LOT about the Arduino as a unit, who don't
> care that an Arduino is a microcontroller on a board that runs machine
> code from flash memory.

Cool.

> 2. But: It seems like a lot of people who wouldn't have the background
> to get into electronics for whatever reason are able to do really cool
> things using the Arduino.

Doubly cool.  The way I see it, there are all sorts of neat things to  
be done in the world where the answer is "you should use a  
microcontroller."  The Arduino environment lets people do that without  
having to have the background in electronics or programming that  
microcontroller use generally used to require.  (Like I said; the  
Basic Stamp did similar things.)

> 3. However: I wonder if the Make culture steals enthusiasm from
> hobbyists who might have become e.g. readers of Circuit Cellar, Nuts
> and Volts, CQ, thus replacing their resistors-and-transistors
> knowledge with "sparkfun sells a board for that" mentality.

Nah.  Or rather, I bet that the overall flow of enthusiasm is in the  
other direction - "we" pick up more people on the technology side than  
are lost to the "modular" side.  Unlike the Basic Stamp, for instance,  
the open-source nature of Arduino encourages re-spinning the final  
version of a project as custom-made electronics.

BillW

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