[sdiy] My Fancy Paperweight, the ESQ

[David G. Dixon]

> I might be "a bit" biased, but given that many of my friends learned to
> program as preteens or teens before the age of internet and widely
> available tutorials / manuals, it shouldn't be That hard for a determined
> adult to pick up the basics in reasonable time. Just use an overpowered
> platform and you don't need to worry about the speed of your code that
> much either.

Yes, Antti, but teens and pre-teens have something in abundance which I do
not: TIME.  I have to parse my free time fairly carefully to build anything,
and I find I'd rather use that time designing and building stuff I actually
understand than learning one more new abstract skill which I will only be
able to apply after much (relatively non-productive) effort.

The other thing which I find a little bit discouraging about software vs
analog is that I can build a relatively simple analog circuit which
absolutely kicks ass and competes with the best of what's available
commercially at much higher cost (the Polymoog Resonator comes to mind).
However, with software, there are teams of highly-skilled professionals
designing stuff which I'll never be able to understand, let alone replicate,
but which I could buy very cheaply (if I wanted to).  The motivation for DIY
in that case is a lot less.

I'm still going to learn microcontrollers, though.  I just have a whole lot
of analog (with the occasional digital logic) to get out of my system first.