Look, the LED is Blinking!
With no more Radio Shack stores around, I tried to get my kids interested in hardware by stocking a cabinet with a few dozen components, a solderless breadboard, a power supply and a multimeter. Luxurious by the standards I grew up under. Took them though some Forest Mins projects, like making LEDs blink with 555 timers. Things that were glorious in my day.
I got a big yawn. The distance between what a beginner can achieve and what their handheld device can do is so huge they couldn't see the relevance.
TBH, I started my shift to software when custom silicon took over in the field I loved. You could no longer "play" with the big boys without your own fab. Maybe FPGAs opened that door back up, but building in an editor sure lacked the visceral quality of wire wrapping and soldering that felt like real building
Biting the hand that feeds IT
