If you don't mind, i'd like to share a piece of my mind on this subject..
I've joined the mailing list 6 or 7 years ago. I still was in high school a=
t the time (yep, i'm 23) and i had two amazing professors which taught me P=
ICs and assembly. Only the basics, of course, but with them the logic behin=
d assembly, how the code works and what it actually do to the processor (lo=
gic flow diagrams, signal diagrams and so on)
of the whole class i've always felt i was the only one who really understoo=
d it, infact i believe i'm the only one who still programs microcontrollers=
, while instead some of the others maybe tamper with *mumble*arduino.

(Seriously, i hate that ****. I hate its community. You buy this damn board=
, copy a tutorial word for word and call yourself a programmer. But when yo=
u have a problem you can't do anything because you don't know anything and =
you don't want to or you wouldn't ask to be spoonfed with another tutorial =
all the time.)
(Sorry for the rant)

Anyway my professors told me about this mailing list when i asked them wher=
e i could find more info because i wanted to learn more. At the time forums=
 were what they were, a mess of circlejerking know-it-alls, microchip forum=
 (if it already existed) was unusable, full of bugs and had little to no co=
ntent, only a lot of "PLS HELP ME" threads, mikroe forum was the same. The =
only place full of real knowledge and real people was this mailing list. So=
, as stated by the old internet rules, i started lurking. The topics were a=
mazing. I learned so much in this years only by reading the mailing list. I=
 also tried to post a few times but i never felt like i was part of this co=
mmunity... Mainly because i'm still an amateur (because i still don't have =
a job that requires me to work with micros, it's all about my projects) but=
 also because the mailing list is simply not my type of "social network".

For quite some time i was afraid to ask if anybody knew some other good dis=
cussion groups... preferrably facebook ones. Why you might ask, because tha=
t's the medium i find myself more comfortable with. I'm a very active part =
of a couple of synthesizer groups (about playing, discussing and building, =
of course) and i don't know.. i see that that kind of medium fits myself be=
tter than anything else. Today's forum are the same. I've never been able t=
o fit in here enough that comment because i see you as the giants behind a =
screen with tons of knowledge and i don't feel like being at your level (ye=
t). Facebook for some reason makes everything more at a human level. In sai=
d groups there are some quite famous musicians and we all talk like we are =
pals, share photos and music and we have a kind of interaction that i can't=
 even think i could do in a mailing list.

This might be a reason why few people post. Also there's the fact that, as =
it was already stated, now if you google something you are more likely to f=
ind answers in more "social" or user-friendly networks and let's just say t=
hat, regarding PICs, the microchip forum has a good amount of content and i=
t pretty active these days

In the end, regardless of other causes (young folks going to AVR or directl=
y to ARM with all their pros or cons), to me the main causea of the stagnat=
ion are the increased availability of info on the web and the use of differ=
ent types of medias, more appealing to others
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