When I was first learning electronics I bought a bunch of kits from Boldport.
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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.
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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 I miss boldport club! Those kits were SO GOOD.
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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 it totally is, and it's been a while since I had that feeling. Maybe I've gotten there with mechanical CAD? I've been throwing my brain against a wall with topology, maybe it's time to find a good text and go to town.
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@futurebird it totally is, and it's been a while since I had that feeling. Maybe I've gotten there with mechanical CAD? I've been throwing my brain against a wall with topology, maybe it's time to find a good text and go to town.
Topology needs time to seep into your soul. You can memorize the definitions and walk through the proofs but some of it just needs to ... sit with you for a time... or at least that's how it was for me.
I got an A in Topology in college but didn't understand it until three years later.
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@futurebird I miss boldport club! Those kits were SO GOOD.
I know right? Boldport was amazing. And you could tell it was a labor of love, their kits were so considerate and made to really help you to learn. And they were forgiving.
(I'd say "except for the cordwood puzzles" but I can even see how these were made with care now. )
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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 @datarama @TheOtterDragon
In the spirit of "Originality is the art of forgetting your sources," perhaps
"Talent is the art of forgetting your persistence."
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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?
When I was perhaps six years old, I wandered up to some outdoors benches at school. A boy of impressive age was sitting there. The boy was probably 8 or 9. He was writing something on a piece of paper. I looked over his shoulder to see what it was.
He was doing three-column addition. Three columns! How could I ever match that? -
When I was perhaps six years old, I wandered up to some outdoors benches at school. A boy of impressive age was sitting there. The boy was probably 8 or 9. He was writing something on a piece of paper. I looked over his shoulder to see what it was.
He was doing three-column addition. Three columns! How could I ever match that?This is exactly how I felt when I missed a lecture in complex and came in and saw this:
"aw hell no. they've got a circle on it now?!?"
It turned out to be fine. But yeah. Math is just always like this from the playground to the very end.
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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 Wild tangent but... Seymour Cray's first supercomputer, before he started Cray Research, used cordwood modules to get the necessary density. I took these two photos - these modules are from the mid 60s:
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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.
Though I've had a burning fire to learn, I can't and won't claim to be self-taught in electronics and computers, as I had many good mentors. (I've also enjoyed teaching, especially those moments when a student pushes through and grasps something new!)
@mina if you are interested, I wrote a page about PCB fabrication technologies; the cordwood method dates back to the early 1950s. (This link includes a bookmark.)
https://syncopate.us/articles/2006/m04a#fab
