Arduino, was: Re: OT: uP solutions

Joachim, On 4/17/2012 5:41 AM, Joachim Thiemann wrote: Silly isn't a strong enough word in my opinion. I'm not exactly sure where the animosity comes from, because I think that the arduino has done a great service to the community. At least in terms of driving down prices on all boards of this nature. And it's not just microcontrollers ---- FPGA boards, eval boards, accessories that are easily driven from a microcontroller (like gps boards, etc). Increased availability of parts. There's more attention on the overall field, more people making projects, more support and a larger advertising base for magazines. I really think it goes on and on. While they aren't likely to admit this, a lot of the old fogies here specifically don't like the accessibility and ease of use. Projects that used to require a specific set of hard-won and war-won battle skills/medals to build and create now no longer do. So the barriers to entry to have been removed, and they're pissed. The elite club they worked hard to join with a large learning curve is now handing out free memberships. Boo hoo. It's similar to the no-code ham FCC license change(no longer requiring a morse code test to obtain a license to transmit) years ago. The old hams, while simultaneously complaining that their dying hobby was growing smaller and smaller, said that this was the end of the world and that the local repeaters would become the CB world of the 80's. Guess what happened? Practically nothing, besides the fact that the number of applications for a HAM license shot through the roof, and the hobby was expanded and sustained through a surge of new hams. The increased number of hams mean more ham equipment sales, more people to support shareware that is out there, and so on. The bottom line re:arduino is that anything that expands the community by enabling people to build things that they want to build is a win-win for me. Who cares if they don't want to solder? Who cares if they don't want to understand digital logic? Who cares if they aren't seeking true enlightenment? These people aren't even necessarily hobbyists -- they are people who want to solve a problem. Why care about the way they go about solving it? Damn Whippersnappers. Keith P.S. One other thing, get your damn car going 10 miles under the speed limit the hell out of the fast lane.