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by WhitneyLand
3177 days ago
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And I started at 12, so I feel you are a kindred spirit and want you to win so much. But is C++ really the first/best/only programming experience? Why would what be the right choice? UX absolutely just as important for developers as is is for ordinary users. I imagine the user experience unfolding for my 11 year old daughter, ideally there is as little friction as possible from brcelet in hand to making code run. We want to minimize frustrations in order to maximize time spent doing and creating. I’m not afraid 11 year olds will lack the ability to use C++, I’m afraid of it not being the way that’s most fun and engaging. And I certainly don’t mean dumbed down. Engineers at any age get more enjoyment from having the best tool for the job. |
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Arduino got where they are in part by having a rather nice IDE for a microcontroller, a nice simplified version of C++ (the Arduino language, which I assume can be used here) that eliminates a lot of the complexity and made it very simple to get started, and a nice easy pattern to upload / compile / test.
Personally, I'm not aware of a better choice out there in the microcontroller world. And it looks like the setup makes it easy (2 lines of code) to turn on / off LEDs or buzzers.
What's nice about using Arduino as well, is that the ecosystem of Arduino is very large. So it's not that much of a step up from here to other hardware projects. It's also not a huge leap from Arduino C to the many other C and C-like languages out there as well.