M.L. wrote:

> On Wed, Sep 21, 2011 at 9:08 AM, Gerhard Fiedler wrote:
>> If this pisses you off, you're probably in the wrong field. This is
>> how technology works. If you want to stay out of this, you need to
>> stay ahead of the commodity technology. Anything with any appeal
>> sooner or later will become commodity, that's what /we/ do (at least
>> some of us, in some cases): we improve the stuff, until it works
>> /reliably/ without messing around, until Joe Everybody can use it
>> and it's ready to become a commodity. Part of working in and with
>> technology means being able to use commodity technology to create
>> new technology. That the existing commodity technology is what 50
>> years ago was the new technology is exactly the point.=20
>=20
> I see a different perspective. There is nothing special about the
> Arduino hardware.=20

I didn't talk about the Arduino /hardware/; this was about the Arduino
(the whole thing).=20

> They're missing the fact that Arduino is only popular because of the
> marketing and because it IS inexpensive.

And, IMO, because it is simple to use -- simpler than assembly, simpler
than C or Pascal, simpler than buying and hooking up a programmer,
simpler than what we normally do when we get a development environment
to work for the first time.

Whatever it is, it has brought people to do something they wouldn't have
done without the Arduino. This was the criticism, and my answer was that
this is the normal flow of events with technology... if it is at all
desirable, at some point it becomes so simple that most people who want
to can use it without getting into the nitty-gritty details -- because
the kinks have been worked out by the ones who don't mind getting into
the details.=20

Gerhard
--=20
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