Hi Guys,
I am remembering something I once wrote that included the phrase "Egoless Programming" 
Very valid criticisms of "Good programming Techniques", and I certainly didn't follow some in the desire to Keep It Simple.
Globals: I wanted to have the Newbie at least see and understand VARIABLES. TYPES, OMG...
delay: Again in the interest of simplicity.. Non-blocking code is a great subject for a later excercise.
I will change the assignment inside the if: You're right, and it will actually be clearer.
@tuxduino, I LIKE that example of using hysteresis, and I'll steal that for a later example.
Variable initialization in the declaration may be a good standard, but it's not obvious to the Newbie. I was trying to make it clear What Goes Where.
There are free readers with code examples which might help "to learn by example"
e.g. - http://www.earthshineelectronics.com/files/ASKManualRev5.pdf -
Mike McRoberts has done some excellent work for sure, and I recomment his book "Starting Arduino" to many people.
In the spirit of Niklaus Wirth, and "Stepwise Refinement", I will look at several incarnations of this simple example, incorporating those better programming techniques and WHY they matter. (I'd have loved it if Arduino had started off with PASCAL as a base).
BASIC was structurally inadequate, but it could be CLEAR to the newbie. My kids learned to program in Dartmouth BASIC on the phone line, starting in 1972. These days, my wife is the head librarian at Hanover High School, 1/2 a mile from Kurtz and Kemeny's old offices where they developed it in 1964.
I'd be really interested in ideas you 'young' guys have about presenting each of these CS concepts to the almost-newbie. I don't want to start by showing them the guts of one of Rob's libraries in C++ and have them turn to watching the Destructors on TV football 