When I was first learning electronics I bought a bunch of kits from Boldport.
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Unfortunately, I hardly know anything about electronics, but now, I'm sooo intrigued to try one of these out.
Needless to say, I love cute blinking stuff.
For a first kit something like this will be less upsetting:
https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256806563908696.html
Slowly you learn how to control the heat in the iron, the names of the parts, how to read the board and circuits etc.
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For a first kit something like this will be less upsetting:
https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256806563908696.html
Slowly you learn how to control the heat in the iron, the names of the parts, how to read the board and circuits etc.
I'm not an *absolute* beginner, I know the names (in German) of electronic parts and their functionality:
Last year, I have soldered the axolotl and the mini organ with my daughter (huge success), but they had very detailed assembly instructions:
https://shop.blinkyparts.com/en/navigation/d280f46375b44a53bfc4b18866bf62f9
What I lack, is deeper knowledge and practice.
I have already ordered the puzzle a minute ago. I like a challenge.
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I'm not an *absolute* beginner, I know the names (in German) of electronic parts and their functionality:
Last year, I have soldered the axolotl and the mini organ with my daughter (huge success), but they had very detailed assembly instructions:
https://shop.blinkyparts.com/en/navigation/d280f46375b44a53bfc4b18866bf62f9
What I lack, is deeper knowledge and practice.
I have already ordered the puzzle a minute ago. I like a challenge.
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What is something that once seemed advanced and impossible to you that later became easy?
Isn't that feeling the best high in the world?
@futurebird Every new skill I learnt at school, I guess. I remember the feeling.
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@futurebird Every new skill I learnt at school, I guess. I remember the feeling.
Sometimes things that made you feel frustrated and like you are in over your head, like you don't even belong working on something so advanced can later make you feel smart.
I think teaching young people this is the most important thing school can do.
But, with time, with more practice and exposure to simpler problems they can become something you master.
I worry that some people never find this confidence in their education.
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Sometimes things that made you feel frustrated and like you are in over your head, like you don't even belong working on something so advanced can later make you feel smart.
I think teaching young people this is the most important thing school can do.
But, with time, with more practice and exposure to simpler problems they can become something you master.
I worry that some people never find this confidence in their education.
And I think it's really important that it isn't about "talent" ... it's about persistence and time.
It is important to not just try the same thing over and over, but chipping away iteratively at a topic that *seems* opaque will make it yield. If you see that another person could do it? It's possible to do. And you can do it too if you want to.
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And I think it's really important that it isn't about "talent" ... it's about persistence and time.
It is important to not just try the same thing over and over, but chipping away iteratively at a topic that *seems* opaque will make it yield. If you see that another person could do it? It's possible to do. And you can do it too if you want to.
I don't think it's really possible to learn without feeling like you don't get it at all for a time.
But, with enough positive experiences finding the way through that feeling the sense that a problem is "too much" becomes exciting rather than making you just want to give up.
It's also important to know that sometimes it might take years to get there. Which is why finding this puzzle easy was so exciting for me. I didn't really feel like I'd learned much ... but I have.
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And I think it's really important that it isn't about "talent" ... it's about persistence and time.
It is important to not just try the same thing over and over, but chipping away iteratively at a topic that *seems* opaque will make it yield. If you see that another person could do it? It's possible to do. And you can do it too if you want to.
@futurebird @TheOtterDragon As I've grown older, I've increasingly become convinced that talent doesn't actually exist.
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@futurebird @TheOtterDragon As I've grown older, I've increasingly become convinced that talent doesn't actually exist.
To the extent that it might exist I think people place too much stock in it and allow it to limit themselves and worse try to use it to limit others.
But everyday we have the opportunity to grow new talent if we want to.
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What is something that once seemed advanced and impossible to you that later became easy?
Isn't that feeling the best high in the world?
Lots of things fit into that category, but I'm going to choose regular expressions. For maybe ten years, I felt guilty for not learning them and hamstrung by not knowing them. Then I just made the time, and I've had decades of productive use out of them. And they weren't nearly as difficult as I'd thought they'd be!
If I were learning them now, it'd be even easier, because now we have the Web as a guide.
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I don't think it's really possible to learn without feeling like you don't get it at all for a time.
But, with enough positive experiences finding the way through that feeling the sense that a problem is "too much" becomes exciting rather than making you just want to give up.
It's also important to know that sometimes it might take years to get there. Which is why finding this puzzle easy was so exciting for me. I didn't really feel like I'd learned much ... but I have.
When teaching I encounter students in mathematics who give up very quickly. This isn't because they are terrible or lazy, they have simply learned that trying over and over to understand math isn't very productive and have had very few moment of success.
It's rational not to waste your energy if that's happened.
But, it's my task to start dissolving that sense of not belonging. "this isn't for people like me"
That's how I felt about the cordwood puzzle.
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When I was first learning electronics I bought a bunch of kits from Boldport. Including the "cordwood puzzle" and when it came I was so despondent. It's pair of PCBs and parts and YOU need to puzzle out how to put them together.
I remember thinking that I'd never be able to work it out. Just putting a kit together correctly and having it work was my limit.
I put the puzzle away, forgot about it.
I found it today ... guess what?
It's SO EASY.
Nice to be old and learn new tricks isn't it?
@futurebird Operating the clutch in a car with a manual transmission. That was so hard to learn. At first it seemed impossible, and when I finally did it, effectively but badly, I thought I’d never get much better.
Years later I realized that I did it probably hundreds of times a week, all smooth and sweet, without even giving it a conscious thought. -
To the extent that it might exist I think people place too much stock in it and allow it to limit themselves and worse try to use it to limit others.
But everyday we have the opportunity to grow new talent if we want to.
@futurebird @TheOtterDragon I think it's all about, as you say, persistence and time. What I think is the big individual differentiator is differences in motivation and enjoyment.
My brother is a phenomenal musician who plays many instruments extremely well, whereas I'm a fairly good bass player. I don't think he has inherently more "talent" than I do - but he does enjoy playing music more than I do, and is a lot more motivated. So he got in his 10000 hours of practice, and I didn't.
If anything here has a genetic component, I'd be more inclined to believe it's which things we enjoy (and therefore are motivated to put in a ton of time on), rather than being "intrinsically good" at something. My brother and I both sucked at guitar when we started playing; he just kept going far more than I did.
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What is something that once seemed advanced and impossible to you that later became easy?
Isn't that feeling the best high in the world?
@futurebird This is an aspirational post: I hope one day I feel that way about swimming. I never learned as a child and am now trying to learn as an adult. I watch people glide leisurely by in the water and then I thrash and flail. It's as though our bodies have entirely different limbs, or the water is more buoyant in the next lane at the pool. I hope one day I glide along and the flailing is just a distant memory.
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@futurebird This is an aspirational post: I hope one day I feel that way about swimming. I never learned as a child and am now trying to learn as an adult. I watch people glide leisurely by in the water and then I thrash and flail. It's as though our bodies have entirely different limbs, or the water is more buoyant in the next lane at the pool. I hope one day I glide along and the flailing is just a distant memory.
I think that can happen for you. And someday I'll really understand capacitors and be able to predict what they do in a circuit rather than guessing and just building it to see what happens.
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I think that can happen for you. And someday I'll really understand capacitors and be able to predict what they do in a circuit rather than guessing and just building it to see what happens.
@futurebird @VirginiaHolloway A capacitor is just a battery with a very high discharge rate and low storage capacity.
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What is something that once seemed advanced and impossible to you that later became easy?
Isn't that feeling the best high in the world?
@futurebird My electronicsy butt and operational amplifiers.
They were triangular black boxes in circuits until I understood their parsimonious equation: Vout = Vin+ - Vin-
This came after watching a video that broke them down into a few simple properties. The equations that describe different op amp configurations are merely derivations of the original after a bit of analysis of the surrounding feedback loop(s).
It is now circuit analysis a la kirchhoff that eludes me a bit.
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@futurebird @VirginiaHolloway A capacitor is just a battery with a very high discharge rate and low storage capacity.
@Wyatt_H_Knott @VirginiaHolloway
yeah I know but it's not always "just like a battery"
I understand smoothing capacitors. But when they are used for timing? I'm a bit mystified by that. I get it takes time to charge and discharge but ... why does it discharge? why do they sometimes discharge before fully charged?
Why are some polar and some non-polar? How is that even possible?
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What is something that once seemed advanced and impossible to you that later became easy?
Isn't that feeling the best high in the world?
@futurebird a big thing for me was more related to confidence but skill: when I started to try and repair things (furniture to electronics, just anything) I was surprised how high the chances of success are. I just had not done it because I *thought* I couldn't do it. But in the end: before tossing it in the bin, why not repair it? It's already broken, so no worries!
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What is something that once seemed advanced and impossible to you that later became easy?
Isn't that feeling the best high in the world?
@futurebird my favourite one is when I was little I'd do some scripting for a game (well, the multiplayer mod, SA-MP) and then one day I came across the source code of the mod itself and realized that it's using the same printf() to write things to the screen. It blew my mind that it's so simple (the rest wasn't but y'know). I thought regular programs were these impossibly hard to make things.
I've been working as a programmer for a few years now after all the hobby projects heh.
