Maker Mentality

I don't consider myself to be a "maker" by any means. More of a tinkerer. But, what has blown my mind most of all is simply how complicated we tend to think things are.

As a software developer I know that writing code. Especially good code. And even more so low level code is genuinely difficult. Sure, high level programming languages, IDEs and online learning resources make it approachable. But, accomplishing anything meaningful from scratch is still rather complex.

I get strange looks from other developers when I tell them I single handed wrote the software my wife and brother's businesses ran/run on. Even in my industry, most people never write a complex piece of software from start to finish on their own. And it does take time. And there are challenges. And caveats (I used the built in libraries which handled a lot, and I leaned on NHibernate for DB communication and things like that).

So, for my birthday this year I when a got Arduino knock-off kit I expected it to put me through the paces. I figured I might be able to follow along with the pre-built lessons and then struggle to branch out of my own. This wasn't really the case. Now, to be fair, a lot of the most complex stuff was handled by an SBC and was technically programming and something which I'm already familiar with.

But, I've been able to take some of those skills already and push them outside of those bounds. Picking up a soldering iron allowed me to escape the realm of bread boards and actually make minor tweaks and repairs to household items and even help wire of some LED lighting for a crafted Christmas gift.

And now, as I dive into 3D printing, I can't help but feel like, if this were taught in school my knowledge in these areas would be vastly superior to what it is now and we would likely be much further along, technologically, as a society.

Just getting where I am has given me a profound understanding of just how basic most household electronics actually are. Sure, computers and cell phones and tablets have insane transistor counts and complex CPUs and other processing units. But outside of those? Most things are actually rather simple circuits which I feel that even a child could understand with little effort.

Not to mention, it is an excellent vehicle to teaching other subjects like math, geometry and logic.

I expected that here, less than 6 months into this adventure I would have either given up on it, or still be messing with totally useless things. But, I replaced a star light my daughter had with a somewhat interactive one. I've got a temperature/humidity/motion/sound sensor which sends data over BT to a Pi Zero and the aforementioned lighting Christmas project.

And most of those were thrown together within days of diving. And they are complete, practical things. Not at all what I expected going into this.