[omnibrain]

That's somewhat bittersweet. The company I now work for and lead was inspired by mindstorms. Our founder had written a DOS based software for alarm receiving centers. Even back then he and his prime customer were unsatisfied with the restricting logic of managing alarms by only having a few choices how to react to an alarm. Usually show some text, and have a person call someone and then write up a protocol. So he build some sort of programming environment for alarm receiving software.

Now they could implement individual alarm workflows for their customers. But that was still nothing his customers could use themselves, because they still would have to know how to program.

But then he saw an ad for mindstorms in the Lego catalogue his son brought home from the toy store. That inspired him to write a completely new software. Windows based with a their own graphical programming environment embedded.

[kragen]

Bittersweet‽ What's the sweet part of Lego discontinuing Mindstorms?

[omnibrain]

I'm not sure if bittersweet is the right word, english is not my first language. But I think the bitterness of Mindstorms ending reminding me of the beginnings of our company could be considered sweet. So I would say it's a bittersweet moment.

I have to admit, though, I never used Mindstorms and as far as I know he never bought mindstorms for his children either. ;)

[Apocryphon]

They're likely shifting focus to a different programmable block product line, namely SPIKE Prime. So it's more of a changing of the guard than the end of robotic educational LEGO.

[kragen]

That might be okay; what's that like?