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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : MMBasic Board Of Education
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| JohnS Guru  Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 4061 |
Good point. Maybe Peter's PicoCalc (if needs be influenced by Game*Mite) is all that's needed. John |
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| PhenixRising Guru Joined: 07/11/2023 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1437 |
We are constantly being told that automation will replace jobs and it already is. The problem though is that these things will never be able to repair themselves. I have a fixed rate of £800/day and nobody even flinches. It's a drop in the bucket compared to the cost of a dead production line. Look at all of us here, AFAIK, we're all grey beards(?) My courier doesn't arrive until 8pm and these people can't believe that I insist on getting the machine running tonight but they just got their first big order from Leyland Trucks with a lot more to come and naturally the machine dies. I don't even know these people but I'm alone in their factory. One of their guys will arrive around the same time as the courier. When one gets involved in control systems, they find themselves involved with all aspects of engineering; pneumatics, hydraulics, mechanics and electrical power. You can write your own cheques (checks). I remember spending a few minutes playing space invaders on my Sharp MZ80K back in 1982 and I haven't touched a game since. Built a PC compatible with which I could plug-in I/O boards and I was off to the races  OK parts arrived, machine up running. Message from customer that he expects me to charge him extra. He already lost enough  |
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stanleyella Guru Joined: 25/06/2022 Location: United KingdomPosts: 2601 |
I built 2 obstacle avoiding "robots". one uses ultra sonic and h-bridge, the other i2c laser range finder and stepper motors and controller and port expander. there's a lot to these and avoidance logic from distance data. it seems learning coding has to be graphics?? |
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PeteCotton Guru Joined: 13/08/2020 Location: CanadaPosts: 554 |
It is certainly one valid path (and I have made a pretty penny from PLCs over the decades), but it is by no means the only way to a good pay cheque within computing. I led the team that designed and wrote one of Europe's first Internet banks. Not a single I/O interface in sight, just database transactions. What works for one person, doesn't necessarily work for everyone. But I'm not even talking about starting kids down a path geared straight towards making money or filling a niche in the job market. It's about getting the kids away from game playing and getting them excited about coding. How they proceed with that knowledge is up to them. Maybe they decide to make a career out of it, maybe it becomes a hobby, maybe they just aren't interested. I'm just saying that there's more than one way to get kids interested in programming. |
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| PhenixRising Guru Joined: 07/11/2023 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1437 |
I just have a problem with games. Granted, these programmers tend to be the best because they need to be intimately familiar with hardware and real-time response etc. But at the end of the day it's only entertainment. You have a real world problem such as power or plumbing or pretty much anything that does anything. You gonna play a video game or get the tools out and solve the actual problem? |
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| Volhout Guru Joined: 05/03/2018 Location: NetherlandsPosts: 5138 |
People that play games tend to have a more relaxed attitude in the real world. They can always re-start, or get a new life. That is sometimes a benefit. That is sometimes dangerous. Volhout PicomiteVGA PETSCII ROBOTS |
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| Volhout Guru Joined: 05/03/2018 Location: NetherlandsPosts: 5138 |
That is amazing for a 9 year old. Although Flappy Bird is a very simple game ... still amazing. Volhout PicomiteVGA PETSCII ROBOTS |
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| JohnS Guru Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 4061 |
Power & plumbing isn't school kids with any kind of 'mite (or Pico). Games on the likes of a PicoCalc where they can use LIST or EDIT to learn how things happen might get them hooked enough to do more. Crude & short games might be best, so their workings can be easily grasped. Could be simple simulations, too. Maybe a view of the globe where you specify the height and it is drawn in that perspective. The things javavi & others post might be useful. John |
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| PeteCotton Guru Joined: 13/08/2020 Location: CanadaPosts: 554 |
Real world problems, like tracking finances, materials purchasing, QA, material sheets for steel, employee hours, sales, job estimations, simulations of bridge stress, world wide communications, CAD, historical data analysis, GIS maps, appointment booking .... and that's just straight off the top of my head. There are a lot of real world problems that do not require physical interfaces to the world (beyond a keyboard, mouse and ethernet port). I'm not disagreeing that physical interfaces are important, they are very much so - I'm just saying they are not the be-all and end-all of the usefulness of computers. Of course, that is also not to discount playing games It is a valid use of free time, from the perspective of brain stimulation and enjoyment. Games take many forms, from brain twisting puzzlers, to fast paced action. I've whittled away many an hour exploring the dungeons of Skyrim, or trying to thwart the Bhaalspawn of Baldur's Gate. Twisting shapes in Tetris or guessing words for Wordle. I don't see that as a waste of my time - rather a healthy change in pace for my brain away from work related problems.I'm not trying to persuade you to take up game playing  but you never know, the perfect game might be out there waiting for you! |
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| PeteCotton Guru Joined: 13/08/2020 Location: CanadaPosts: 554 |
Yes! I agree. Good for him. And it's the first step - understanding the start-loop-end nature of a games program. Once his appetite has been whetted, he'll create more more and more complex programs... that's how it started for me. |
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| zeitfest Guru Joined: 31/07/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 588 |
I think kids will be learning how to use AI to create games and largely bypass programming.  |
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| PhenixRising Guru Joined: 07/11/2023 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1437 |
I couldn't disagree more. Games are why kids are fat and pathetic. At age eleven, I was rebuilding my motocross bike engine for the next race. We were always outside building stuff. Look at today's kids...never seen such a mess. China's kicking our butt because we've been dumbed down. Like I stated earlier. Only we grey beards are doing anything constructive. |
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| PeteCotton Guru Joined: 13/08/2020 Location: CanadaPosts: 554 |
Not the kids I see around me. Genuinely not one fat kid on my entire street. All are super active in hockey, football, luge, ski-ing or BMX etc. Most are an absolute credit to their generation. One kid is hugely into 3D printing - making jewelry and drones. Another makes his own hot sauces. My own kids all work hard jobs, diligently, and all three are huge into video gaming (and skinny as ski-sticks). I am sorry, that the kids in your life appear to be upsetting you - but if it is any consolation - you are in good company. For 2,500 years (and almost certainly longer than that) old folk have been lamenting how pathetic the younger generation is. https://historyhustle.com/2500-years-of-people-complaining-about-the-younger-generation/ Myself, I remember our generation being considered "soft" because we hadn't lived through a war and hadn't had to national service. We grew up playing video games (I was hooked on Donkey Kong and later, The Bard's Tale). Interesting that by your perspective we are now the constructive people. I think Gen Z will be lamenting the lazyness of Gen 2050 in a few decades Edited 2025-08-07 09:59 by PeteCotton |
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| PeteCotton Guru Joined: 13/08/2020 Location: CanadaPosts: 554 |
For the main part - I agree, that will be true. I think everyone will be able to create programs that do whatever functions they require ("Write a database to organise my retro LP collection"). However, some people (including kids) will still program for enjoyment. A finely tweaked bit of code here, a little optimisation there. We have had digital cameras for years, yet people still paint for enjoyment. Modern cars are superior on paper to old bangers, yet people still spend time and money getting their classic car running, just for fun. Sports are pointless, yet people still pay money to watch them (myself included). I think there simply becomes a split between programming for financial gain and programming for fun. One of the things I love about the CMM2, is that it has re-sparked my joy of programming. I've programmed professionally for the last 40 years. I loved it for the first few years - I couldn't believe people were letting me muck around on giant mainframes. Then the sheen slowly goes off the job. Until finally, my work programming job has become boring, painful and stressful. Doing things in the CMM2 takes many times longer than it would on my dev computer. In fact, most of what I do on the dev computer wouldn't be practical at all on the CMM2. Yet - programming the CMM2 puts me in an almost zen like state of meditation. The stress caused by my work programming melts away - and it's just me and the machine. So why am I writing programs on the CMM2 - when I could do them in a fraction of the time on my PC? I don't know. I can't explain it. But I know it to be true. And I'm sure I'm not alone. |
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Mixtel90 Guru Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 8000 |
It's surprising what seeing a LED light up in response to some programming that you've just done feels like. It's only an LED, but it's still an achievement. Writing the code for LEDs to simulate traffic lights at a road junction can be a real challenge, especially if someone has thrown in some pedestrian overrides, traffic sensors, a filter lane and a change over to timed operation outside the rush hour period. :) You don't need a lot of complex hardware to drive a programmer to distraction! Simple games can be written for buttons and LEDs, especially if you have a cheap LED matrix. Anyone remember Black Box, where you have to detect the position of something by watching the exit points of reflected rays fired into the box? Yes, you can do it on a display, but an LED version is pretty challenging to write. If you can capture someone's interest in the first place then they'll soon catch on to imagining the things they might be able to do. When the Pico first came out there was a free book PDF available, I don't know if it is still free, but there are proper printed versions available. "Get Started with MicroPython on Raspberry Pi Pico". That's the sort of book that I think we should be looking at. It starts from nothing but by the end you have a pretty firm grasp of the fundamentals plus a bit. A lot of the work has been done - it's in the MMBasic manual now. ----------------------------------------------------- @Pete You can very easily expand a CMM2 to almost limitless GPIO of all different sorts, using both the rear port and I2C expansion. Try doing that on a PC without it costing you a fortune. :) . Edited 2025-08-07 18:02 by Mixtel90 Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
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| PhenixRising Guru Joined: 07/11/2023 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1437 |
@Pete I'm not complaining about young people, I am complaining that they're just not being encouraged to learn skills that are in demand. They come across "get your degree in David Beckham studies" or other worthless garbage and many of them believe that if they have a degree, there is someone ready to pay them a serious salary. One time, I was "kidsplaining" to my eleven-year-old and he said "Dad, I do know the difference between torque and horsepower" I'm doing the same with my grandkids; I refuse to sit and watch TV or play video games. They love science museums, etc. Next on the agenda is to take them on a steam locomotive ride and when we're done, they will understand how that steam is converted into motion. Get them started on understanding how things work and they get hooked. Chatting to a young guy; "oh my girlfriend works with computers, she's super intelligent". The girlfriend joins the conversation and it turned-out that she entered data into a spreadsheet and that was it. Another told me that his girlfriend was in her second year at university, studying games programming. She knew the name of one of the popular engines but didn't even know about programming languages. Now she's a bartender.  |
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| Mixtel90 Guru Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 8000 |
You should be teaching how to program, not how to write a program for a particular task. The two aren't related. Anyone can get a program for a particular task - either buy it or ask a LLM and tweak the answers. That's the easy stuff. Learning how to work through *any* task logically and create a program to solve it is where the real skills lie. Scratch is a brilliant tool for teaching logical thought, although I'd hesitate to call it a programming language it is really. Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
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| PhenixRising Guru Joined: 07/11/2023 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1437 |
Funnily enough, my son's significant other asked my opinion about Scratch because she felt that she wasn't learning "proper programming". I wasn't aware that she was interested because she has a great job already. Seems really interested in MCUs and so I'll be providing a CMM2 and PicoMites. She is George Best's niece, BTW |
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| Mixtel90 Guru Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 8000 |
Scratch teaches you logical thought. That's something you need for programming, which is the next step. :) Strangely enough, Scratch is so general that playing with it isn't wasted if what you want to do is fault finding systems or something like that. It's the visible logic process that's the key. You can see why you should think along certain lines without getting confused by commands and functions. Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
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| PeteCotton Guru Joined: 13/08/2020 Location: CanadaPosts: 554 |
I agree with you there. But hasn't that always been the way? (Not that that is an excuse for it). Growing up in the 70s/80s, we had free university (for up to five years) for everyone. Some people opted to get degrees in Medieval French Poetry, which is about as useful as a salad spinner in Glasgow. Here in Canada, tertiary education is profit based (which is an equally terrible idea), so kids are encouraged to get degrees in all sorts of crazy subjects - regardless of the employability of them. I also 100% agree here. I think that's where AI is only going to solve part of the problem. It will work great for people who just want a result (a database to sort something out for example), but if you want to create something entirely new, then, even if you get AI to write the code - you still need that logical mind that can break problems down into tasks that the computer can manage. A large portion of my job is spent bouncing ideas back and forth with clients to mold what they think they want, into something that can actually be achieved by a computer. Often times the processes that need to be put into place are not even computer related, but physical world changes (such as putting a numbering system on the stock shelves, so the computer can identify where a part is).  This is the way. |
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