Re:Lego Finds Discontinued Set For Boy Who Saved Up For 2 Years
by polyfractal on Tuesday December 04, 2012 @11:11AM
(#4871543)
Likewise, Mindstorms was one of the big reasons I got into "real" programming. Before Mindstorms, I played with a lot of web stuff (mostly HTML and some gaudy JS). But with Mindstorms, I started doing real programming work. First with their "block builder", then moving into Not-Quite-C. Programming the Mindstorms was super fun and super frustrating...nothing quite like working on an embedded device with limited memory and processing as a 12 year old. Plus the robot itself would typically tear itself apart from too much torque.
Mindstorms also propelled me into science fair, where several of my projects were Mindstorm-based robotics. And science fair is what propelled me into science in general, leading me to a career in biology and computer science.
So, basically, <3 Mindstorms.
Re:Lego Finds Discontinued Set For Boy Who Saved Up For 2 Years
by mintplant on Tuesday December 04, 2012 @09:47AM
(#4871108)
And then there's the FIRST LEGO League competition [1], which takes middle- and junior high-level teams and these sets of MINDSTORMS and has them work together to build a robot for competitive play, teaching STEM principles on the way. There are thousands of teams all over the world, and it's a wonderful experience. The program is also a funnel into the high school-level FIRST Robotics Competition [2], which graduates into actual machining, CADing, programming, and so on, as well as community outreach and business skills from raising funds and structuring a sustainable team.
The pieces from Technic are much more Meccano-like, in that they don't all have studs on top, and there are holes down the sides of the pieces with "bolts" to connect them together at arbitrary angles. (And there is cogs, axles, chains and motors.)
Mindstorms is an actual real robot, in the hands of kids, along with a fairly well defined progression of methods of programming it[3] (the Lego supplied methods have several stages of simple/easy to more complicated/powerful, and the third party languages include C/C++ and so on). It is actually one of the major factors in my learning to program. Having a programmable microcontroller so tightly integrated into a 3D-printer-like system gives so much power and flexibility for experimentation, especially in the hands of intelligent 10-15 year olds, who aren't being stimulated by school at all.
As someone who loved/loves both his Meccano and Lego, I think the normal Lego < Meccano < Lego Mindstorms, in terms of promoting technical thinking & experimentation.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_Technic [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_Mindstorms [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_Mindstorms#Programming_la...