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I replaced my son's school timetable app with an e-paper

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Re: I replaced my son's school timetable app with an e-paper

#91

Post by maccard »

dotancohen wrote: post #87
ben_w wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is cash the only thing that gives that benefit? Or was cash just a convenient low-risk mechanism because the pocket money parents give to their kids is in small enough units that they can afford for their kids to waste it or straight up lose it? If the latter, I suspect even games with internal currencies would provide the same learning opportunities. And I don't mean micro-transactions here, I mean like the SimCity…

Games and such do not have the real-world consequences of cash. I've sent all my kids to go out and e.g. buy some groceries. They learn to count their change and deal with strangers who might not be trustworthy. They learn to protect their wallets and not lose it. They learn to look at price tags. All real world skills that games do not simulate.

But not skills that translate to the biggest outgoings you will have as an adult. It doesn’t prepare you for having your salary appear as a number, and your rent or mortgage disappear as another line.

They’re good building blocks but they’re not enough.

Re: I replaced my son's school timetable app with an e-paper

#92

Post by bityard »

IshKebab wrote: post #78

I've been working on getting a calendar on an Inkplate 10. Great hardware but my god is the Arduino software awful. It doesn't even have incremental builds! A one line change to my code means it completely recompiles a ton of libraries including mbedtls! The edit-compile-run cycle is like 3 minutes. Awful. Arduino code and APIs are also really badly designed, and badly documented. The Inkplate uses an Xtensa ESP32 so…

You've missed what Arduino is for. The Arduino software/hardware combination is not meant for professional hardware and software engineers who know what they're doing. You're complaining about the quality of the software, elsewhere you'll find EEs bemoaning the fact that most practical use cases of an Arduino could be replaced with a 555 timer chip.

In any event, you don't HAVE to use the Arduino software. If you hate it so much, stop using it! The Arduino software just wraps existing open source "normal" MCU toolchains, you can use those directly instead.

Re: I replaced my son's school timetable app with an e-paper

#93

Post by IshKebab »

bityard wrote: post #92
IshKebab wrote: post #78

I've been working on getting a calendar on an Inkplate 10. Great hardware but my god is the Arduino software awful. It doesn't even have incremental builds! A one line change to my code means it completely recompiles a ton of libraries including mbedtls! The edit-compile-run cycle is like 3 minutes. Awful. Arduino code and APIs are also really badly designed, and badly documented. The Inkplate uses an Xtensa ESP32 so…

You've missed what Arduino is for. The Arduino software/hardware combination is not meant for professional hardware and software engineers who know what they're doing. You're complaining about the quality of the software, elsewhere you'll find EEs bemoaning the fact that most practical use cases of an Arduino could be replaced with a 555 timer chip. In any event, you don't HAVE to use the Arduino software. If you hat…

> You've missed what Arduino is for. The Arduino software/hardware combination is not meant for professional hardware and software engineers who know what they're doing.

No I haven't. This kind of "but it's for beginners!!" argument is nonsense on two fronts:

1. Just because it's for beginners doesn't give it an excuse to be bad. Why doesn't incremental compilation work? Why doesn't it have a proper build system? Why is the API so awful? You can fix all those without hurting beginner friendliness - in fact fixing those would make it more beginner friendly.

2. The fact that it is soooo popular means that there isn't a good alternative "pro" option anyway, so I am more or less forced to use the "for beginners but terrible" Arduino because it's what everyone else does. Why shouldn't people who know what they're doing be able to use Arduino?

What the pros actually do is use the vendor-specific SDKs, but those have their own big downsides (namely they're vendor specific).

Don't make excuses for it.

Re: I replaced my son's school timetable app with an e-paper

#94

Post by IshKebab »

sokoloff wrote: post #88
IshKebab wrote: post #78

I've been working on getting a calendar on an Inkplate 10. Great hardware but my god is the Arduino software awful. It doesn't even have incremental builds! A one line change to my code means it completely recompiles a ton of libraries including mbedtls! The edit-compile-run cycle is like 3 minutes. Awful. Arduino code and APIs are also really badly designed, and badly documented. The Inkplate uses an Xtensa ESP32 so…

I think the beauty and genius of Arduino was how much more accessible that project made microcontroller development for great many people. As a pro-SWE and dabbling electronics person, I had bounced off the PIC and other toolchains, sometimes managing to get a simple 8051 project working. Then Arduino came along and it was like a light switch was turned on. (Witness how many professional AVR programmers were up in ar…

Yes I agree that the "it just works" thing is great (and missing from the vendor SDKs). But that's orthogonal to "it isn't shit".

It could "just work" AND have a good API, proper build system, proper IDE, etc.

That's what ARM were (very slowly) heading towards with Mbed Studio before they canned it.

Re: I replaced my son's school timetable app with an e-paper

#95

Post by ericd »

ben_w wrote: post #82
dotancohen wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if the money is in flying 747s (it isn't), learning to fly a Cessna at a younger age is still beneficial. Same with cash money and young children. For what it's worth, I've been in the software field for decades - long enough that I prefer not to use it. My preferred barber loses my business because he only accepts appointments via his app. I'm not installing it, so I cut my hair somewhere else. He knows this, a…

Is cash the only thing that gives that benefit? Or was cash just a convenient low-risk mechanism because the pocket money parents give to their kids is in small enough units that they can afford for their kids to waste it or straight up lose it? If the latter, I suspect even games with internal currencies would provide the same learning opportunities. And I don't mean micro-transactions here, I mean like the SimCity…

I think digital money is just too abstract for kids, and even adults struggle with comparing amounts and truly grasping their significance. Handing over a stack of bills just feels a lot more significant than swiping your card, which is the same whether you’re buying a $5 coffee or a $5000 tranche of a home renovation. With cash, you have a lot of the stuff in your hand, and then you have less vs none.

Re: I replaced my son's school timetable app with an e-paper

#96

Post by crtasm »

beala wrote: post #18
crtasm wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The app or the website, right? If this is your blog please add "Show HN: " to the title here.

I don't think there is a rule that your own work must be tagged with Show HN. You can opt-in to Show HN if > you've made something that other people can play with. HN users can try it out, give you feedback, and ask questions in the thread. [1] but afaik nothing in the guidelines [2] requires it. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html 2: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I see - thankyou

Re: I replaced my son's school timetable app with an e-paper

#97

Post by ben_w »

dotancohen wrote: post #87
ben_w wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is cash the only thing that gives that benefit? Or was cash just a convenient low-risk mechanism because the pocket money parents give to their kids is in small enough units that they can afford for their kids to waste it or straight up lose it? If the latter, I suspect even games with internal currencies would provide the same learning opportunities. And I don't mean micro-transactions here, I mean like the SimCity…

Games and such do not have the real-world consequences of cash. I've sent all my kids to go out and e.g. buy some groceries. They learn to count their change and deal with strangers who might not be trustworthy. They learn to protect their wallets and not lose it. They learn to look at price tags. All real world skills that games do not simulate.

> All real world skills that games do not simulate.

Learning to protect and not lose a wallet, or to count change… seems like exactly the kind of thing that no longer matters, as we move to more digital money everywhere. What change, what wallet?

Outside those points: multiplayer games with currencies in them simulate all of the rest, and even single player games simulate some of those things.

Re: I replaced my son's school timetable app with an e-paper

#99

Post by tzs »

IshKebab wrote: post #78

I've been working on getting a calendar on an Inkplate 10. Great hardware but my god is the Arduino software awful. It doesn't even have incremental builds! A one line change to my code means it completely recompiles a ton of libraries including mbedtls! The edit-compile-run cycle is like 3 minutes. Awful. Arduino code and APIs are also really badly designed, and badly documented. The Inkplate uses an Xtensa ESP32 so…

The Arduino IDE uses the gcc toolset for actually compiling and linking. You can use those directly if you would like incremental builds.

If you turn on verbose logging in the IDE the logs will show the actual commands it is using to invoke gcc which is handy to figure out locations and flags needed for the various commands.

The verbose IDE log should also show the command line tool (probably avrdude) that is used to download the binary to your Arduino.

Re: I replaced my son's school timetable app with an e-paper

#100

Post by mlinhares »

mschuster91 wrote: post #85
rrr_oh_man wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just click on the friendly little coloured rectangle with the rounded corners. That's the app. That's all you need to know. That’s the exact amount knowledge most users want .

> That’s the exact amount knowledge most users want. Back when I was young I was completely astonished by that mindset... but now that I'm older, I kinda get it. When you gotta juggle 8 hours of work, 2 hours of commute, 1-2 hours of chores, and completely forget about kids or a sane sleep schedule... you don't have the time dealing with bullshit, you need something that works . And you got money to pay for that, too…

Yeah, most of my friends that don't work programming or building computers couldn't care less. I think we try to reflect our own beliefs on what computers should be and how people should interact with them but that is not the reality for most people, they just want to do a thing and click a button, anything else is too much work.

When i was getting a new computer to my father in law the main requirement was that it would be hard for him to do stupid stuff, like install a virus, so we went with a mac. It makes a lot of sense for him to use a very limited device because all he does is browse, watch youtube and listen to music, why does he have to understand all the details of how all of this works at all?

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