Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Lego Is Discontinuing Mindstorms

brickfanatics.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 199 posts

Re: Lego Is Discontinuing Mindstorms

#121

Post by taneq »

colechristensen wrote: post #69
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #36

As others have noted, they still have an education focused robotics set, it’s just not called Mindstorms: https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/lego-education-spike-prim... As a now-successful robotics engineer, I was the target age when the first Lego mindstorms set came out. Due to the cost it had to be a combined birthday and Christmas present (still obviously very privileged). The simple scratch-like programming sys…

As I grown man who has built actual robots with all the skills to do embedded programming and mechanical engineering to make robots... I'm still envious of Mindstorms and yet never purchased any despite having the funds to do so. I think this is the same part of my brain that still thinks getting a PDA is a good idea despite having had a smartphone for I don't know how many years now. Is there a word for holding on t…

I don’t know if there’s a word for it, but I get that too.

Re: Lego Is Discontinuing Mindstorms

#122

Post by diceduckmonk »

zeven7 wrote: post #105
primitivesuave wrote: post #55

I got the original Lego Mindstorms 1.0 kit for my 8th birthday - there was no programming interface, just a way to select one of 256 possible sequences of high-level actions the robot would perform in a loop. I paid for my first car by working at summer camps that taught kids how to use the Mindstorms 2.0 and NXT, and built my first 3D printer with Lejos ( https://lejos.sourceforge.io/ ), Lego Technic parts and a tin…

> how much dead weight the team was carrying in students who participated in the middle school Lego league, who did not have even the basic coding/engineering skills to make any contribution to the high school team other than paying the membership dues That kind of just sound like middle school. The clubs and sports I was involved in were things I was very bad at.

It sounds a lot like college and school as a whole for me. I was in a top 5 CS program, too. Entering the workforce was the first time I felt empowered by the team dynamic. Quite possibly this is where imposter syndrome comes from. Maybe I’ve progressed to my maximum level of incompetence where I am now the deadweight.

Re: Lego Is Discontinuing Mindstorms

#123

Post by FullyFunctional »

lupire wrote: post #117
dragonwriter wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren’t discontinuing it because its hard to sell in that space. They are retiring it in favor of their newer offering in the space (LEGO Education Spike Prime). They also have, for programmable robotics, the younger-kid focussed LEGO Boost. Plus they have at least one DUPLO set aimed at what I think of as the “tactile coding toy” space (where instructions are represented as physical configurations of objects), D…

They are dropping the non-Edu line, as parent was talking about.

Exactly and it’s a quite obvious that if it sold well it wouldn’t have been dropped. Edu is a completely different market (for better and worse).

(We also have Boost but it’s much more limited IMO - my biggest gribe is that LEGO has so many incompatible systems which is ironic)

Re: Lego Is Discontinuing Mindstorms

#124

Post by capableweb »

perryh2 wrote: post #86
k__ wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you recommend to kinds these days?

Make Twitter bots :)

There is a different feeling when programming things in the physical world, especially if you only programmed digital creatures before :) Give it a try if you haven't, Lego is a great non-intimidating way of getting into it, otherwise Arduino is pretty simple for programmers to grok as well.

Re: Lego Is Discontinuing Mindstorms

#125

Post by Teknoman117 »

diceduckmonk wrote: post #122
zeven7 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how much dead weight the team was carrying in students who participated in the middle school Lego league, who did not have even the basic coding/engineering skills to make any contribution to the high school team other than paying the membership dues That kind of just sound like middle school. The clubs and sports I was involved in were things I was very bad at.

It sounds a lot like college and school as a whole for me. I was in a top 5 CS program, too. Entering the workforce was the first time I felt empowered by the team dynamic. Quite possibly this is where imposter syndrome comes from. Maybe I’ve progressed to my maximum level of incompetence where I am now the deadweight.

I never thought of it this way.

6 years in and many people around me look up to and/or respect me and I always feel like they're making a horrible choice.

Re: Lego Is Discontinuing Mindstorms

#126

Post by Teknoman117 »

primitivesuave wrote: post #55

I got the original Lego Mindstorms 1.0 kit for my 8th birthday - there was no programming interface, just a way to select one of 256 possible sequences of high-level actions the robot would perform in a loop. I paid for my first car by working at summer camps that taught kids how to use the Mindstorms 2.0 and NXT, and built my first 3D printer with Lejos ( https://lejos.sourceforge.io/ ), Lego Technic parts and a tin…

> I got the original Lego Mindstorms 1.0 kit for my 8th birthday - there was no programming interface, just a way to select one of 256 possible sequences of high-level actions the robot would perform in a loop.

Are you sure you're not thinking of the Robotics Discovery Set? The blue brick? It had a bunch of predefined things you could stitch together to make little programs directly via the brick's interface.

RIS 1.0 definitely had a programming interface via the serial IR tower.

Re: Lego Is Discontinuing Mindstorms

#129

Post by frognumber »

Part of the problem is Lego is horrible for robotics. It's very hard to build complex mechanical systems in Lego. It's also degenerating; newer kits are less and less creative (kids follow instructions and build models, rather than creative inventing).

The kits I use with my child are Engino Discovering STEM. Each kit lets you build a bunch of interesting, complex mechanical systems. It's not just a little better than Lego; it's in a different class for building robotic systems. It's also a lot cheaper.

What it needs, though, is a competent software platform. I'd love to have this integrated with something like the BBC Micro:bit.

My general feeling is that Lego is in cash cow mode. A lot of money flowing in, but weakening fundamentals.

Re: Lego Is Discontinuing Mindstorms

#130

Post by LAC-Tech »

colechristensen wrote: post #69
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #36

As others have noted, they still have an education focused robotics set, it’s just not called Mindstorms: https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/lego-education-spike-prim... As a now-successful robotics engineer, I was the target age when the first Lego mindstorms set came out. Due to the cost it had to be a combined birthday and Christmas present (still obviously very privileged). The simple scratch-like programming sys…

As I grown man who has built actual robots with all the skills to do embedded programming and mechanical engineering to make robots... I'm still envious of Mindstorms and yet never purchased any despite having the funds to do so. I think this is the same part of my brain that still thinks getting a PDA is a good idea despite having had a smartphone for I don't know how many years now. Is there a word for holding on t…

I say embrace it.

I never had a computer as a kid in the 90s. But I would go to electronics stores and play around with PCs - my most vivid memory was the large white and grey keyboards.

I now own a very expensive, large, white and grey keyboard :) (Leopold FC980C for you keyboard fans).

Post reply on HN