Enginursday: Developers and Getting Started with Programming

In the late 60's i started with BASIC. Later when I dived into assembly, reading well commented code help me learn what is happening and why a particular instruction was used. Well commented code, libraries, and examples will help a newbie have confidence to hack a bit of code to do something different. They are not ready to write a new protocol, but want to change which pins are used.

1. Interrupt Driven Programming How to build software that actually reacts, instead of just waits on a polling loop. Why this can be critically important, particularly for events that might be missed in between polling loops. Talk in depth about interrupt priorities. Compare an Arduino, which cannot do nested interrupts, to smarter processors, which can handle multiple nested interrupts. Point out that just about no processor can do multiple simultaneous interrupts, regardless of how many cores it has, due to being on a single system bus, rather than a switched fabric; notable exceptions to this, if any.

2. Hard-Real-Time Software What Hard-Real-Time, Soft-Real-Time, and other varieties of "Real-Time" mean. What this means for which C standard libraries to use, and POSIX compliance issues. Implementing a Hard-Real-Time system on baremetal. Implementing Hard-Real-Time with one or more Hard-Real-Time OSes.

3. Complete HID Device development The complete process of HID Device development, from start to finish. Implementing:

* Buttons * Digital Joysticks * Analog Joysticks, Analog Pedals, & Analog Triggers * Trackballs & Mouse sensors * Capturing data from sensors * More experimental examples

4. Designing for Manufacturing & Reliability What does Sparkfun do to squeeze the most value out of its manufacturing? How should footprints and PCB designs be changed to be cheaper and more reliably manufactured?

Also, check with your local IEEE Section: http://www.ieee-denver.org/ And Technical Society Chapters: http://www.ieee-denver.org/technical-societies/

They will no doubt have some very relevant advice.

I'd love to see more random interesting demo projects that don't necessarily have any specific purpose, which can ultimately serve as the foundation for something else. I found that learning by example was by far one of the most enjoyable, and quickest ways to pick something up, and having a short/concise tutorial attached can help for when you get stuck.

Hello. I am new here, and is very interested to learn how to even build a single product. I do not understand programming at all, but after reading all about raspberry pi, it getting me interested in learning all these, but really not sure how do I start or where to start. I am thinking of building a device which connects to a lamp, so when they are asleep and switch off the lamp, it will notify me that they are asleep. Maybe it can be connected to wifi, but I not sure how to do this. I might need a program to send me notification right? Hope to hear some advice from you. Many Thanks!

What would be really awesome, considering you mentioned bluetooth, would be a more understandable library for the nRF8001. The Adafruit library is better than others, but it still uses the original code from Nordic. I would very much appreciate it if someone could rewrite that library so it would be more understandable (This is coming from a sophomore CS Major). Right now I am having trouble using another device with the nRF8001 because of SPI related issues switching between the devices.

I would like to see more programming tutorials for those of us who are beyond the "Blink an LED" phase, and are starting more complicated projects, but are not experienced programmers. The visual programs are frustrating because you cannot add libraries, create functions, add new hardware, etc.

A user friendly repository of code examples and libraries would help - Not github, but a web based listing of what you as developers have written, and libraries you think would be useful. It is a chore to look up several different tutorials and product examples to piece together code and try to make things work.

Also, comments, comments, comments in your example code would help - over comment, state what each line does if you need to, but nothing is more frustrating than looking at code that assumes you understand all the uses of things like string, char, and pointers, etc. and there is no usable resource to figure it out. (and no, the arduino learning and reference sites don't count as they have very few examples and don't explain a lot of things well)

I'd like to see a tutorial (series?) on how to combine and extend demo code/code samples. That was one of the reasons I gave up on Arduino in 2008(!) and I didn't start to really enjoy using it until I took a VERY basic "logic and program design" class. Even though I could follow the hookup guides, I had no vocabulary to 1. describe what I wanted to do (so I could look it up) and 2. parse error messages. "Not declared in scope" doesn't make any sense when you don't know what "declare" and "scope" mean and if you don't know what a constructor is you can end up with three or four duplicates from trying to mash stuff together. And on and on.

And if I missed a cool tutorial on this, you can come throw a shoe at me, it's a short walk.

Heh. I come from the other side of what seems to be a pretty big divide in the robotics world -- I'm comfortable with software, less so with hardware. The easiest way to learn a new development tool is to actually do a project with it. The problem often comes down to finding a project hard enough to be interesting, but simple enough to get your arms around. For learning new programming languages, I"m a big fan of Project Euler ( https://projecteuler.net/ ), a series of increasingly difficult math problems meant to be solved with the help of a computer. If you can get 25 or so of these babies solved, you'll have a pretty strong foundation in the new language of your choice.

As someone that works in industry here are my suggestions to your question:

1. It's nice to show how easy it is to program an Arduino, but if people want to expand on that project, there will be a point where they won't be able to continue to use it. (Arduino is a rapid prototyping platform, nothing to be done long term). It would be nice if you all expanded on OTHER chips, boards that people can go to when they want to expand the scope of their project. This mean, more tutorials/guides on BBB, Mojo/Papilio, etc. I see a lot of people get limited to just Arduino when another board/chip can do the job better and be easier overall.
2. Do in-depth analysis of code. It's nice that people can do drag/drop programming, or use already created functions from the Arduino Library to start, but there will come a point where they will run into limitations that those have in place (either on purpose or not). Being able to dissect the code, understand what it does, and how to do will help them learn how things work. When I was learning how to program an HC11/S12, I had libraries I could use to do PWM, interrupts, etc., but it was easier for me to see how that code is written, and then write my own. (basically a flow chart)
3. Teach people how to debug/analyze failing code/circuits. A a frequent visitor of the IRC channel, whenever someone comes in with a problem and asks for help, a lot of times they don't know where to begin, or what to do.
4. Documentation, documentation, and... Umm... Documentation. (This goes hand-and-hand with #3). A lot of times when I help people and they don't know why a circuit isn't working, I ask for a schematic and they don't have one, or know what it is! One thing that makes any project successful is the documentation on it.

It's awesome that you want to get more new people into the realm of making/hacking hardware, but we have to remember that there's a means to the madness. Once a person gets to an intermediate/advanced stage, an Arduino and drag/drop programming will not cut it anymore. Lastly, keep things challenging, make them think and ask questions.