I don't, and my suspicion is that here we meet the limit of what can be done when the doing is both remote and quasi-anonymous. And by unvetted volunteers.
There is no substitute for real life. There is nothing better than reducing the student to teacher ratio.
There is nothing more sublime than the Socratic Experience, and having but one student is a luxury not often afforded. I am lucky to have taught small groups of fairly well matched students who were srsly motivated. And groups of one, also. Nothing sings like making progress in those circumstances.
And I am fortunate to have been a student in those circumstances, too, all the way back, never mind how far back precisely, to learning The Calculus: one student, one teacher, one hour of instruction a week and the rest of the time mostly on my own.
I hope there is such a website or forum somewhere. But I don't hold my breath waiting to hear about it.
This WEB site is that place that you are looking for.
I also said:
“ Suggest people ignore the posts that bother them, and concentrate on the posts that they think are more amenable.”
You, others, (and I hope me too) do a great job in dedicating significant time and energy in helping these kinds of age groups and new users.
Currently helping a senior (oh that’s me too ) with a personal project, probably about 50 hours so far, in design, hardware training, software training, construction, writing actual code, debugging the whole system. I’m sure you and 777 have done similar.
If the 12-18 and 60-90 get upset, maybe we should put the same effort into reminding newbies, they should ignore the posts that bother them.
Perhaps reminding new people is right up there with please show us a schematic.
I am old and normally even tempered. I have a low tolerance for stupidity and arrogance, but in those cases I just move on. I learned long ago to not be a stress victim.
Plain ignorance, on the other hand, can be fixed so I am happy to help in those cases.
That's ok
I'm Middle Age and Non existent Tempered
I have a high tolerance for stupidity and Low for Arrogance.
As did i
Before you mentioned it, i didn't know Curmudgeon was a word.
I thought that was just an amazing coincidence that you decided to Monopolize on.
then i found out what it meant
definitely the right approach for protecting one's sanity...
But I think the community can lose out when Expert X skips over topic Y because Curmudgeon Z is making the topic less than welcoming...
I've learned a lot from reading posts I'm not contributing to and always find it sad when a topic that could be quite educational dies because of the personalities involved.
These days that seems to happen when the participants devolve into ad hominem attacks on each others style and attitude, rather than the original question or even the sometimes-useful tangents.
"Pedant!" "Meanie!" "why are you posting boilerplate?" "you're not being friendly to beginners!" "Well you're oversimplifying!" is a lot less pleasant to read than "well, when I was programming the mainframe with buttons and switches and patch panels, we used to ..."
The Arduino Forums have been one of the best places for "noobs" to find help, for the last 15 years or so. Sure it has occasional problems. It has in fact pretty much the SAME problems that various other forums and mailing lists have had since ... the beginning. But the sheer volume of advice that turns out to be helpful is far greater than most.
Guilty. Although, part of that is ... if the original question has been basically answered, I don't need to participate in the tangent, even if it might be fun.
And sometimes, this is good. I used to have to answer a lot of questions WRT Optiboot, and I feel a certain deep sense of satisfaction that there is now a significant community of people that will answer all but the most complex questions without me!
Certainly not against these. I call them "knowledge nuggets".
I'm less fond of the mean/pedantic/belittling tangents. Found myself in one recently and somehow managed to feel embarrassed, exasperated, and despondent, all in under 5 minutes.
School, where the environment is conducive, resources are substantial and paid-in-full (my school had one computer, locked in the physics lab, and I had to supply my own floppies - but I made it work without the internet), ages are the same, knowledge is similar, teacher/student ratio is 1:20, response time is seconds, and all in the native language. Didn't pay attention in school because you heard the codes are on instructables? Get in line, follow directions, stop crying about treatment in the gauntlet, or pay attention at school for the next four years... because... the world needs ditch diggers, too.
"Give me the code." - This probably comes with a comms barrier and more time than they want to invest... until someone gives them a code dump to hand to the instructor. I'm guilty of this a few times, but had fun with it.
Or the clown OP who lead with... "I want to develop a self-driving robot for a very special purpose and as I am not into programming, electronics or robotics..." Then, after being shown some flaws in his setup and understanding, he called the forum a waste and deleted his original post.
Every OP seeks "equal" treatment. Every helper starts with equal treatment. Time and interaction steer the thread.
Um OK
So Im very new here.
As I read through this thread, there was something that stuck out to me that I totally related to. Something that happens with me at my job.
When someone asks one of those questions that gets asked umptine times. You're so tired of answering it you get instant attitude.
I hate being that person. That being said, is there an area on here that has a compiled list of these questions?
If so I have not stumbled upon it.
Sorry to interrupt.
Thanks
No don't apologize, We are all here to discuss this, and thank you for the input.
I don't think there is such a list , i actually thought about doing that not too long ago.
the problem is, even if there was, the newbie's coming in wouldn't look at it anyway .
They have a topic that is given to newcomers by default
and the idea is if you go through this you're supposed to know everything you need to know and then from that there are other links, where the idea is that a newcomer would look at all that, But they usually don't
Take this as an example, Now like you i'm an Electronics guy and not so much software although i dare say i have more software experience under my belt than you do by this stage, I've got about 40ish years Electronics and around maybe 3 years Arduino and Programming total, around 10 years i would say on and off
Now i joined here maybe a month ago or so and as i came in it wasn't all too obvious either , 1 thing that the forum by default presumes that you would do , Which you didn't and i didn't because it's not as seemless as they think it is.
is the robot...
His name is Discobot
Go and do this , it'll get your priviledges up quicker
and then you, Just like me can bask in the glory of the Elite certificate
it's just something to get off your plate
that will get you "Cerified"
then run through it again but this time type this in
(this was one that took me forever coming it to figure out
and then you'll be licensed
and from there you're good.
if you have any problems with Discobot let me know
And now for something not so boring.
Cool Programming stuff...
So when i came on i had already gone through a few Arduino programming courses and had a few Arduino Course apps on my phone, Yeah, they're ok but this course which was suggested to me by a bloke called @StefanL38 was pretty cool
it's more like, A Bloody good course that can be done in a short period of time, Around 2 hours and it'll give you a solid Understanding of things , some parts are an eye opener.
Now that site is called "Starting Electronics"
You can have a poke around but honestly
it should be laid out better
there is some Beginner Electronics / Bread Board Basics stuff there
(which you are likely going to skip over)
But i reckon you'll breeze through the programming course in around 1 hour or so.
Also your drum project is cool, I have a mate who's also a percussionist , Drums, Bongo's,, Conga's
Anyway, i reckon doing this course will give you greater insight quicker
Also a few things as a beginner to keep in mind
Just like there is a thing in Electronics
What soldering station is the best or
Which Scope is the best
Apparently there are 2 subects you don't want to get involved in
or at least, Enter with Caution
These things...
{ }
Are called "Braces"
Do not call them Brackets you'll be shot.
The official name is "Curly Braces"
"Opening Curly Brace" for the left one
"Closing Curly Brace" for the right one
But apparently you'll still get shot
The safe path to take is, Call them "Braces"
These are not brackets, they are to be called Parenthesis
( )
Never commit the mortal sin of using the wrong name
OK so what else do you need to know
Oh yeah Standard formatting
so you see this...
You'll open a basic sketch and say hi guys i'm doing this, trying to get built in LED to work
void startup() {
}
// Your code will be here
void loop() {
}
and someone will pop in and say, "No mate you've got your braces formatted incorrectly" it should be like this
void startup()
{
}
// Your code will be here
void loop()
{
}
Now i will save you the pain, Here is how it goes
There is an everlasting whinge going on about "Curly Braces" and "Braces".
From what i understand it depends on a few things, 1 being what country you're in
and 2 being at what point did you get into electronics and programming.
see, in Australia because of our education system we wouldn't use the term parentheses but instead, Brackets, so i had some crap thrown at me because of that .
The bottom line is the standard in programming is
Braces or Curly Braces is fine , Technically it can be argued that there is no other "brace" but there are brackets so there is no need to call them Curly
Mate, figure out which is easier for you and use that.
As for the formatting , I actually agree with the veterans that the latter is the better one
even though your bare minimum sketch comes out with the former.
From my 3 years of arduino experience i'll give you this little pearl.
In terms of debugging ,
Put all braces on their own line
Put them to the far left
it's so much easier
When you indent , Indent by 2 spaces each time you want to indent
There is also a cat fight over what is correct indentation, Take it with a grain of salt,
but 2 - 3 spaces seems to be overall acceptable
Now me, I Like to label my braces as i'm going along, Like this...
void startup()
{ // OPENS void startup
{ // OPENS the next thing
} // CLOSES the next thing
} // CLOSES void startup
// Your code will be here
void loop()
{ // OPENS void loop
} // CLOSES void loop
and so on, You're going to find this is going to make debugging when you have unbalanced braces so so much easier
also when i'm creating a sketch (this is just a personal thing) i open a notepad++
and do this
OPEN SETUP
CLOSE SETUP
OPEN LOOP
CLOSE LOOP
OPEN FOR
CLOSE FOR
OPEN IF
CLOSE IF
OPEN WHILE
CLOSE WHILE
Then ill start doing this as i create new statements or loops
I'll put a number next to what i just created as it opens and closes so it looks something like this mid program
OPEN SETUP 1
CLOSE SETUP 1
OPEN LOOP 1
CLOSE LOOP
OPEN FOR 1 2 3
CLOSE FOR 1 2
OPEN IF
CLOSE IF
OPEN WHILE
CLOSE WHILE
so you can see now that i'm on top my balancing, some people will say "count your braces" i say , don't bother , just make a note as you're going along
but yeah, Labelling is very useful
Now the final thing
Now your'e going to stumble onto this one, I would provide the linkk but i forgot where it was.
You're eventually going to figure out,
How do i edit the BareMinimum sketch so i don't have to type all this up everytime i start a new one
You'll go down a rabbit hole of config editing and it may or may not be worth it,
anyway, since IDE 2.1 it became easier
here you go
You open a new sketch
Save it as the name "default"
Go in and make that sketch look however you want
then you have to tell the IDE to load from it on execution of new sketch
you do that like this
Wow Thank you for the info!
I guess that's some of the stuff I want to know.
"Trigger" words HAHA
I too am guilty of complaining about using the wrong terminology. Because lets face it, it makes a difference.
I will give that course a go and see how much I can absorb.
Not sure I understand the purpose of the discobot thing. I will maybe pause that for the moment.
With the project I'm working on, I know everything I'm trying to accomplish has already been done in some form, I just need to piece the appropriate parts together. Knowing the proper terms will help me research. This will limit my stupid questions.
You're welcome
and YES, Live and die by the trigger words of the forum.
But seriously though, when you're new to the forum , i'll be honest, sometimes, i can not be the nicest of places
I have an advantage by having lots of patience, so my first advice would be
Have Patience
then...
Just basically feel everyone out a little and get to know the personalities.
I have found that take it step by step, it'll be ok.
If you have a problem either PM me anytime, or if you need an offical advice on something you go to the Mod's but even then .. some of them are a bit funny and take getting used to.
I have found @PerryBebbington to be a good bloke and he helped me out a lot to make sense of the forum. @pert is also a good guy, and in my opinion @UKHeliBob is also but bob is a different cup of tea LOL, Stick with perry and pert first and just be respectful and open about your intentions
now if you get a member who's being a bit of .... You know @perry has taught me a few handy things to ALWAYS keep in mind
Tip #1 - Whenever you Post it MUST ALWAYS BENEFIT THE O.P. IN SOME WAY.
You can muck around a bit but don't do it too much, they don't like things going
off topic
Tip #2 Now, After a person answers your question , Looked the bottom of the chat and
tick the SOLUTION box (Mark it solved) After that you can muck around if you
like. I had a topic i started recently, in the first 3 or 4 posts my question was
solved, it was about Dual core task handling, Now that post now has like 113
comments , They just sort of went off on their own topics , but.. I marked it
solved and it is interesting to see where they go with their topics. But even
though Off topic, YOU JUST DO YOUR BIT
You see what happens is is only takes 1 person to make 1-2 comments then 3 more people jump in and you have 6 - 10 comments , Then a mod jumps in and is like
what the hell is going on, but they are more polite than that so it looks like this
"I have moved this to a different topic as it was off topic, it has been moved to a more appropriate area" which means
(Translation) "Jesus christ guys, Seriously.... Again !!)" at least that's what i take it to mean
They dont like doing this so if you can avoid you're on their good side.
Tip #3 - Let a comment die, if someone's being an idiot , Give them a chance to show it's not misunderstanding, but if the persist and they are rude, Flag it with a mod, and as for you, Just politely bow out and let the conversation die. This works wonders.
You'll like it, it's quick and easy,
Do me a favour if you can though, because me and @StefanL38 are looking for feedback on it, so when your'e done let me know what youo thought, Be Critical !
We don't question it LOL
Just be quite, don't ask questions and do it and enjoy your certificate and badges.
I'm not even going to start to voice my opinion on Discobot i mean the name....
I would have gone with ELECTROBOT Yeah, let's not go there, but Disco bot teaches you a few cool fundamentals so go through it it takes like 5mins
And now i will do the obligatory,
there are no stupid questions,
if you have any questions feel free to ask. but then again you've started a topic on it so you can ask there to stay on topic but you can PM me if you need anything or want to chat,
Be cool
) with a personal project, probably about 50 hours so far, in design, hardware training, software training, construction, writing actual code, debugging the whole system. I’m sure you and 777 have done similar.
I try to help people when I can. Occasionally there are those beyond help - I just move on without comment.
