Will the person who decided to change the forum please identify him/herself?

We should be told.

People should not be able to hide anonymously from the community.

We would like to get feedback in relation to the many adverse comments that have been posted.

...R

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Of all the problems in the world I think that this forum's latest update is pretty minor for getting upset about. Give it time to settle out and if then still not up to your standards then just find another site that suits your requirements better. Life is too short to take battles on that don't matter in the big picture. We have gone through many worst forum performance issues in the past and lived to survive them. It's not like you pay for access to the site. :wink:

Lefty

We don't pay for access, we're just the ones who expend our own personal time to fix "other" people's problems for them. Ardunio works very much like Microsoft. The users do the majority of the debugging.

oric_dan:
We don't pay for access, we're just the ones who expend our own personal time to fix "other" people's problems for them. Ardunio works very much like Microsoft. The users do the majority of the debugging.

That sounds pretty correct. The forum community is a part of the arduino success for sure and I feel the arduino folks have acknowledged that. My biggest issue recently is how widely diverse the product line has become with most of the boards and shields issued over the last year or so. The fragmentation of products is going to be a growing problem I fear. It's just not a mega168/328/1280/2560 world anymore. That and the problem with legacy libraries, playground examples and references, and tutorials the ability of helping newcomers is growing more difficult all the time.

So question: Is Arduino world now (or getting) too large and fragmented?

Lefty

I've been thinking EXACTLY the same thing lately. Fairly easy to fork and sell new hardware, 10X or maybe 100X more difficult to produce adequate and bug free software support for same. There's a reason there are well over a million posts on this forum.

I've probably spent the majority of my time over the past few months, reverse-engineering and "fixing" other people's software. Very tired now.

retrolefty:
Of all the problems in the world I think that this forum's latest update is pretty minor for getting upset about. Give it time to settle out and if then still not up to your standards then just find another site that suits your requirements better.

Lefty

I can't find anything in this response that suggests even the tiniest amount of empathy for the concerns of people who dislike the changes. (And believe me it has been a struggle to say that politely).

Somewhere in the Arduino hierarchy I suspect there are people who would like the success of the Arduino to continue. I don't think that alienating users is the ideal way to achieve that. It would be different if I had seen even one voice saying "thanks, the new forum is soooo much better".

I came to the Arduino system because it was much more accessible than the PIC system and the forum has a lot of useful information and helpful people. But the lack of any feedback about the criticism of the changes leaves me feeling that I am dealing with the faceless civil service which I thought I had escaped after working there for 35 years.

...R

Knowing the name of the person who decided the GO will not bring back the old forum or solve a single issue.

I remember that the old forum has several (more) serious issues too, like the fact that it could not be reached at all (sometimes multiple times per week) and that the number of these errors were increasing. Reason enough for the

The new forum has several points that can be improved upon I agree 100%, and I have seen at least 4 or 5 solved within a day thanks to people digging in code (style sheets etc) to find the causes. But not all fixes are equally easy and making changes on a train riding at full speed is never easy. I agree with retroLefty that it should get some time, but some more feedback on the forum (pinned post @ the top) could help too

For those who want "live" feedback, they can subscribe to the developer mailing list as there was/is more feedback about the forum (but also other discussions)

Next time the forum will be upgraded ( 1-2 year?) I hope they will run the old & new forum in parallel so people can try out and go back, and make suggestions to improve.

@robtillaart, do you have a current link for the Developers Forum? The link I had bookmarked is now broken, and I can't see one using google.
http://arduino.cc/pipermail/developers_arduino.cc/

@robtillaart @oric_dan The developer list is not the appropriate place to air grievances about the forum. It is is a technical discussion of ongoing development of the Arduino IDE and firmware.

ThisIsMyName:
@robtillaart @oric_dan The developer list is not the appropriate place to air grievances about the forum. It is is a technical discussion of ongoing development of the Arduino IDE and firmware.

Agree 100%, All I stated that there was more feedback on the mailing list, not a place to complain.
But I will remove the post above. (done)

This wasn't about complaining - it was about where the heck is it nowadays?

Maybe it's not available anymore. ????

retrolefty:
My biggest issue recently is how widely diverse the product line has become with most of the boards and shields issued over the last year or so. The fragmentation of products is going to be a growing problem I fear.

Without wishing to sound negative, I agree with this. It has taken me a couple of years to come up to speed with the Atmega328 and to a lesser extent the other processors in the same family.

The release of the Leonardo (and similar devices using the ATmega32u4 chip) have been an added challenge, particularly as their interface with the "main" computer (Windows/Mac/Linux) is somewhat different.

Now we also have the Due, the Yún, and the Tre. Although these boards may sound good on paper (faster, more features) often this isn't what is needed to control a cat feeder, an aquarium, or security system.

For me, a strength would be to stop releasing new devices, and just keep improving the core libraries, and the documentation.

It reminds me of the old days of learning Microsoft APIs. You would learn how to use their database interface (for example), taking maybe a couple of years to get your understanding complete, only to be told that it was being phased out in favour of a "new, improved" interface. You sigh and learn that, only to have this happen again in two years. Then you stop sighing, and hope that the old interface will still be supported for the next ten years. First it was ODBC, then DAO, then ADO (or some such sequence). I don't even know what they are up to today, I lost interest. I felt as if the effort I was putting into learning their APIs was not valued.


As for the original post, my own suggestions are not always acknowledged either, and I know the name(s) of the people in question. I think we just have to be a bit patient.

Plus look at all the trouble people have with the Tiny chips and WiFi shield, etc. Seems to be no end to trying to normalize that stuff.

Arduino is a great idea, but there's still a serious and fundamental problem when it comes to applying the tools to such a wide range of processors. I know firsthand from the enormous amount of time I've spent trying to get various libraries working correctly with the 1284 chips. I ended up making an issues page that has 20 or 30 items on it.

As I mentioned, it's a lot easier to fork out new h.w., but producing adequate s.w. support is many times more difficult.

oric_dan:
do you have a current link for the Developers Forum? The link I had bookmarked is now broken, and I can't see one using google.
http://arduino.cc/pipermail/developers_arduino.cc/

https://groups.google.com/a/arduino.cc/forum/#!forum/developers

I've just set up a redirect, but still have to recover the old archive to keep online as historical reference.

thanks, M-B.

@ Reply 12 :slight_smile:

Solely agree with that answer, in 40 years of watching & trying to understand micros, this is the first ecology on this subject that has been straight forward, well backed & highly supported.
Many development systems, such like the Arduino, took too many steps forward. These steps to compete with technologies created voids & this was solely the reason why those ecologies wained.

In answer to the original topic, I found it easier to correct the layout from the browser, you can read about it here Correct Font(s) - #6 by JB_AU - Suggestions for the Arduino Project - Arduino Forum & do some googling on userContent.css

In another topic Are we going to have a new section on Intel Galileo soon? - #6 by JB_AU - Suggestions for the Arduino Project - Arduino Forum it was put to me.

The future of Arduino is clearly "more power to do more complex things"

to sum things up, i still stand by my reply

The future of Arduino clearly "is to do more with less"

It's OT for this thread but whatever.

I also think the product line is getting too wide, I can almost keep up with helping on the Due but now I see there are TI and Intel chip etc. I'm not even going to try I think.

I see the Intel chip "supports" the shield interface but doesn't actually use direct IO, it has IO expander chips. Another difference that will trip many people up.


Rob

Same here. Lot of cards, overwhelming my time availability.

Maybe us "old farts" can concentrate on the AVRs and people newer to Arduino (or who are willing to learn the new hardware) will step up to the plate with the new boards.

I wax and wane with enthusiasm about the Due and often don't even look at posts on the Due board, depending on my state of wax/wane :). Assuming the other boards will get there own forums I may not even check them at all.


Rob