Author Topic: Why Arduino users so agressive?  (Read 46903 times)

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Offline james_s

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Re: Why Arduino users so agressive?
« Reply #50 on: August 22, 2019, 12:15:08 am »
That is one more perk of the arduino platform, there are the classic AVRs, SAM, ARM, ESP8266, ESP32, etc that can all be used fairly interchangeably. It's certainly not the most optimal way of working with any one of them, but for a casual novice it really is about the easiest way to get something up and running. A few months ago I built an environmental monitor for our cabin using an ESP8266 on the neighbor's wifi, the whole software development process took only an hour or two and I'm certainly not a professional developer. For me it was a very quick and easy way to get something up and running that so far has been working perfectly.
 

Offline KL27x

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Re: Why Arduino users so agressive?
« Reply #51 on: August 22, 2019, 12:43:14 am »
^Yeah, nothing wrong with that. Even you do that with a raspberry pi, who cares? If it works, it works.

Is this "real embedded design?" Sure. If you need to optimize cost and performance, you might need to do some further tinkering. But I doubt you own that many cabins.

Quote
You can program almost anything in-circuit. What's the point of dragging DIP chips back and forth?
Yeah, I dunno this. But Rstopher been at the game for a long time, now, judging from his posts. From way back when IC sockets were more than a curiousity. I think I better learn Arduino, soon, because the older I get, the more appealing "cntrl + C/V" looks. Hopefully, by then I can just outsource or hire younger guns to do the optimizing. 

(Also, I think he means to burn the Arduino bootloader in a socket. Then upload the sketches through the serial port on the pcb. As long as the bootloader isn't going to change, that might be easier/cheaper. Bare chips are easier to handle than entire PCB, in general, and last I checked, company like Microchip, even, charges minimum ~20 cents each to burn your chips in bulk!)
« Last Edit: August 22, 2019, 12:55:37 am by KL27x »
 

Online rstofer

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Re: Why Arduino users so agressive?
« Reply #52 on: August 22, 2019, 12:59:44 am »
Arduinoo Nano's are especially cheap at around $4.30 with free shipping.  How much design can I do for $5 - about 3 minutes at my billing rate.

For some projects $4.30 might be huge overkill as under-$1 PIC will work just as well (or better). For other projects you may need something for $10. There are thousands if different MCUs which are used for different purposes.
Yup!  But get that $1 PIC designed into the project for $3.30 or 1.9 minutes of labor!  It's a hobby, component costs are irrelevant.  Labor is the deciding factor.

Quote

Another strategy for dedicated ATmega328 (DIP package) projects is to program the device on the Arduino board and just plug the chip into the main project board.  As long as you don't need the USB->Serial Terminal support, this works well.

You can program almost anything in-circuit. What's the point of dragging DIP chips back and forth?
You certainly can and I have done it quite a bit with the ATmega128 and the early LPC21xx family.  JTAG is also a nice way to go.

For my purposes, strictly hobby, I'm not about to get into designing something that already exists.
 

Offline KL27x

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Re: Why Arduino users so agressive?
« Reply #53 on: August 22, 2019, 01:03:36 am »
Heck, even a company like Boeing "can't afford" to keep employees that actually build and maintain what isn't really all that complicated. I wonder if their full time engineering staff uses Arduino, lol. Ok, India. <Hands over plane stuffed with Arduinos>. This is what we want. Just make it not suck. We already worked out all the potential issues well in advance, so we know there will be no unforeseen complications, and it should take about 3 months.

You'd think they would hire/buy the group that builds it and keep these guys on full time or at least retainer, for the life of the product, with this particular sorta $$$ and lives at stake.
« Last Edit: August 22, 2019, 01:41:42 am by KL27x »
 

Offline techman-001

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Re: Why Arduino users so agressive?
« Reply #54 on: August 22, 2019, 01:09:43 am »
Hi

I`m old tech from 70th without any programming background
But interested in AVR too just for fun
It is so funny and EASY to solder and program AVR  now :-+

But every time I google for AVR projects I`m furious about agressive Arduino users  :rant:

Is Arduino a sect?  :-//

No, more like 'Cargo Cultists' waiting for more free 'libraries' to drop from the sky.

I've never found any posts by Arduino users to be aggressive, they are mainly very happy they can now make something that they simply could not do before Arduino, when designers had to read the 1000 page technical manuals and understand them before even attempting to fire up the Micro.

Arduino users often say "who has the time to read a 1000 page technical manual ?" and my answer is always, "any embedded design engineer" .

Are Arduino users competent in embedded ? absolutely not. They are clueless about the most basic fundamentals of electronics, embedded design and software, because they are artists or basic hobbyists who have the time to watch all 1000 episodes of "Days of our Lives" on television, but not to read a ARM technical manual.

If you are furious with Arduino users then you have a strange view of the Arduino world in my opinion. Perhaps you should stop blaming others and put in a effort to get a clue of your own because nothing is easier than Arduino for the lay person and nothing is more useless than Arduino to a engineer.

Or as claimed, are you just trolling ? If you are then you have wasted your time because Arduino users here seem pretty relaxed, and engineers here don't bother with it.



 

Offline rhb

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Re: Why Arduino users so agressive?
« Reply #55 on: August 22, 2019, 01:29:38 am »
I sort of sneered at Arduinos and the AVR chips in general for a long time.  But then I saw the light.

The Arduino scared the holy bejeezus out of the other chip vendors bringing us an embarrassment of riches in the form of cheap dev boards from every chip maker who previously wanted an arm and a leg for a $10 piece of hardware.  That has been hugely beneficial to all.

The other notable feature is that the ATMEGA chips are 5 V TTL superglue.  So if you want to interface with something like GPIB it's cheap.  Driver chips not required unless you *really have to* put 16 devices on a single bus.

Part of my disdain was due to the attitude issue noted in the start of this thread.  It's classic "experienced novice" attitude.  All of my serious experience is with high end workstations and larger and a major annoyance has been dealing with people who assume that all computers are the same.  They are not.  Even the same systems in the same company are often different.  At a major oil company where I worked on my first contract job I had a standing offer of $100 to anyone who showed me two Unix workstations that were configured the same.  I withdrew the offer as I was standing watching a couple of employees working for me clone a system I had built.  In response to a comment I made in a meeting 6 months earlier I found myself with two regular employees working full time under my direction.

The good news - bad news about software is that it is *very* hard to ensure that things are the same above a rather low level of complexity.

The developers and promoters of the Arduino have done the EE community a great service.  Be grateful even if some of the users are annoying.

Have Fun!
Reg
 

Offline techman-001

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Re: Why Arduino users so agressive?
« Reply #56 on: August 22, 2019, 01:47:15 am »
Learning Arduino, that knowledge is somewhat consistent going into the future.

Many years ago I though that my "knowledge" was going to go with me into the future. Since then, so many things changed on me, so I learned to embrace the change. Besides, I found out that if you figure out how to work with one MCU, you can easily transfer your skill to others. I'm pretty sure that if I get a new MCU which I've never seen before, I can figure it out rather quickly. Things are still changing very quickly - if you get fixated on something particular, you're destine to live in the past.

So true. Tech is changing so fast now that it's impossible to keep up with except in very niche areas.

I'm always amazed by some Arduino users extolling the virtues of the Mega328 but who don't seem aware that this MCU is practically prehistoric now as the AVR 8-bit microcontroller architecture was introduced in 1997.

Sure, it still does everything it did 22 years ago, but MCU tech has changed enormously in that time.

If you show them a STM32F777 with its 93 internal peripherals, 2093 registers and 17051 bitfields running up to 216 MHz, they are more likely to exclaim, "what would I need that for" (as tho ignorance is a virtue) and "I don't have the time to read the 1954 page manual!" without realizing that this product is already 2 years old and those that have read the latest Tech manual (dated March 2018) have a massive head start applying this chip in their designs.
 

Offline Mr. Scram

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Re: Why Arduino users so agressive?
« Reply #57 on: August 22, 2019, 02:03:40 am »
The converse also seems to be true with people looking at hugely complicated ultra fast MCUs to do something an Arduino will do with ease. Newer doesn't always equate more suited to the job.
 

Offline NorthGuy

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Re: Why Arduino users so agressive?
« Reply #58 on: August 22, 2019, 02:25:27 am »
It's a hobby, component costs are irrelevant.  Labor is the deciding factor.

If it's a hobby then labour is supposedly what you want.
 

Offline member_xyz

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Re: Why Arduino users so agressive?
« Reply #59 on: August 22, 2019, 02:45:07 am »
Talking about sects.

These people totally and blindly follow their gods. :-DD

https://www.thebackshed.com/forum/ViewForum.php?FID=16

https://forum.micropython.org/



 

Offline techman-001

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Re: Why Arduino users so agressive?
« Reply #60 on: August 22, 2019, 03:07:07 am »
The converse also seems to be true with people looking at hugely complicated ultra fast MCUs to do something an Arduino will do with ease. Newer doesn't always equate more suited to the job.

If you have no expertise regarding "hugely complicated ultra fast MCUs", what leads you to believe that you can make this comparison ?

What you call "hugely complicated ultra fast MCUs", I call "immensely capable modern MCU's that are a designers dream come true".

Newer DOES almost always equate to "more suited to the job", to deny that is to assume that brains far smarter than yours or mine were wasting their time and  billions of dollars in embedded chip manufacture for no reason at all.

Given that ST's shares doubled in value in 2017, they must be doing something right ?









 

Offline wilfred

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Re: Why Arduino users so agressive?
« Reply #61 on: August 22, 2019, 04:32:28 am »
Talking about sects.

These people totally and blindly follow their gods. :-DD

https://www.thebackshed.com/forum/ViewForum.php?FID=16

https://forum.micropython.org/

Yeah. Go on, let's hear how?

I clicked the links and it wasn't immediately evident to me.
 

Offline rhb

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Re: Why Arduino users so agressive?
« Reply #62 on: August 22, 2019, 04:35:42 am »

Newer DOES almost always equate to "more suited to the job", to deny that is to assume that brains far smarter than yours or mine were wasting their time and  billions of dollars in embedded chip manufacture for no reason at all.


Sort of depends upon what you are trying to do.  If all you want to do is flash LEDs on a jacket or automate a sculpture, what matters is how much of your time does the task consume.

Using a modern 3.3 V MCU and $5 in driver chips to do what a $5 MCU board will do is fairly silly unless you *really* need something the modern MCU does.

Hammers are *very* ancient tools.  But in several millenia, nothing has made them obsolete.  I've got literally dozens, all of which are designed for different situations.  Sometimes it's hard to decide which will be best.  Especially if you only get to hit it once and choosing the wrong hammer means everything was ruined and will require major work to fix.

Driving the GPIB bus changed my attitude rather dramatically.  I plan on keeping a stock of 328P and 2560 boards on hand, in the future.  They are the right hammers for a lot of nails.
 
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Offline james_s

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Re: Why Arduino users so agressive?
« Reply #63 on: August 22, 2019, 05:25:05 am »
What you call "hugely complicated ultra fast MCUs", I call "immensely capable modern MCU's that are a designers dream come true".

Newer DOES almost always equate to "more suited to the job", to deny that is to assume that brains far smarter than yours or mine were wasting their time and  billions of dollars in embedded chip manufacture for no reason at all.

Given that ST's shares doubled in value in 2017, they must be doing something right ?

I've worked with microcontrollers of many types over the years, from quite powerful and modern to quite primitive and generally I aim to get the most out of the least. IMO it's silly to try using a high end STM32 for something where a low end 8 bit AVR is under-utilized. Likewise it's silly to spend TOO much effort getting a very low end part to do a job that is better suited to the higher end.

Of course ST is doing something right, there are millions of applications for powerful advanced microcontrollers, that doesn't mean that they're necessarily the best option for everything. If a 20 year old part does the job and is readily available then where is the advantage of using a newer more complex part? Your statement is frankly ridiculous, the fact that these smart people are not wasting their time developing powerful parts doesn't mean those parts are the best choice for every application.

A good engineer weighs the pros and cons, and chooses the most suitable part for the task at hand, taking into account many factors, not just blindly choosing the newest most advanced part because "newer = better".
 

Offline james_s

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Re: Why Arduino users so agressive?
« Reply #64 on: August 22, 2019, 05:32:23 am »
It's a hobby, component costs are irrelevant.  Labor is the deciding factor.

If it's a hobby then labour is supposedly what you want.

I want enjoyment, not labor. If I just wanted labor I could take the really long road on almost any project, but that would be boring and tedious. Ultimately I want the most enjoyable route to a finished working project, what that means depends on what my particular interest is at the time. Sometimes I just have a specific need and want to hack something together that works, other times I want to experiment with some new part or technology or just see if I can do something. The goal is not just to create the maximum amount of work for myself.
 

Offline techman-001

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Re: Why Arduino users so agressive?
« Reply #65 on: August 22, 2019, 05:43:46 am »

Newer DOES almost always equate to "more suited to the job", to deny that is to assume that brains far smarter than yours or mine were wasting their time and  billions of dollars in embedded chip manufacture for no reason at all.


Sort of depends upon what you are trying to do.  If all you want to do is flash LEDs on a jacket or automate a sculpture, what matters is how much of your time does the task consume.

Using a modern 3.3 V MCU and $5 in driver chips to do what a $5 MCU board will do is fairly silly unless you *really* need something the modern MCU does.

Hammers are *very* ancient tools.  But in several millenia, nothing has made them obsolete.  I've got literally dozens, all of which are designed for different situations.  Sometimes it's hard to decide which will be best.  Especially if you only get to hit it once and choosing the wrong hammer means everything was ruined and will require major work to fix.

Driving the GPIB bus changed my attitude rather dramatically.  I plan on keeping a stock of 328P and 2560 boards on hand, in the future.  They are the right hammers for a lot of nails.

I can understand the usual Arduino Mantras by Lay people who don't know any better but I'm surprised to hear this argument from you.

Please explain why a $0.45 STM32L053 needs $5 in driver chips and a $5 (Arduino)  MCU board does not ? Try and be specific, I'm sure most on this forum will be able to follow you.

I don't believe your hammer example is appropriate here because there is a massive difference between a ancient hammer made from bronze compared to a modern hammer made from specially refined and heat treated steel.

However one part of your hammer example does apply to your first assertion ... "how much time does the task consume"

Who uses hammers every day ... a blacksmith!

"The Metal Museum has a two-year apprenticeship program that provides housing, insurance, a living stipend and studio facilities. The intern works in the blacksmith shop and assists with exhibit design and installation during regular business hours. The intern has unlimited access to the blacksmith shop and foundry. At the end of the two-year period, the intern has a body of his or her own work, as well as experience working on large scale projects designed and produced by the Museum. "

If it requires TWO YEARS to learn how to use a hammer to blacksmith, surely it will require that much (time or more) for any decent skill, i.e. embedded design.

Owning dozens of hammers doesn't make you a blacksmith.
 

Offline Howardlong

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Re: Why Arduino users so agressive?
« Reply #66 on: August 22, 2019, 05:55:14 am »
... I do exactly that when I want a quick and dirty simple automation one-off Arduino solution for my own use. I can’t imagine me using one in a commercial product though, although I know many have.

I do this all the time too. Except I copy from my past projects. And I never use Arduino. Works better that way ;)

Most of the time, I do the same, for example I know the entire PiC ecosystem far, far more than I do Arduino. I also know it well enough that if I want to turn around, say, a USB macro keyboard in under an hour, that’s just not going to happen on a PIC, but is eminently feasible on an Arduino.

Part of this is that the libraries are already there, part of it is that there are examples already there, and part of it is because a PIC will be ten times more complex.
 

Offline techman-001

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Re: Why Arduino users so agressive?
« Reply #67 on: August 22, 2019, 06:06:48 am »
What you call "hugely complicated ultra fast MCUs", I call "immensely capable modern MCU's that are a designers dream come true".

Newer DOES almost always equate to "more suited to the job", to deny that is to assume that brains far smarter than yours or mine were wasting their time and  billions of dollars in embedded chip manufacture for no reason at all.

Given that ST's shares doubled in value in 2017, they must be doing something right ?

I've worked with microcontrollers of many types over the years, from quite powerful and modern to quite primitive and generally I aim to get the most out of the least. IMO it's silly to try using a high end STM32 for something where a low end 8 bit AVR is under-utilized. Likewise it's silly to spend TOO much effort getting a very low end part to do a job that is better suited to the higher end.

Of course ST is doing something right, there are millions of applications for powerful advanced microcontrollers, that doesn't mean that they're necessarily the best option for everything. If a 20 year old part does the job and is readily available then where is the advantage of using a newer more complex part? Your statement is frankly ridiculous, the fact that these smart people are not wasting their time developing powerful parts doesn't mean those parts are the best choice for every application.

A good engineer weighs the pros and cons, and chooses the most suitable part for the task at hand, taking into account many factors, not just blindly choosing the newest most advanced part because "newer = better".

How old are you James ?

I started building embedded gear in 1975 on a National PACE 16 bit CPU with high speed paper tape and assembler. The project was the worlds first  nucleonic iron ore flow gauge designed by a engineer who wrote his own Forth for that CPU and project.

Please don't think that I'm impressed by your vague background.

Frankly, you sound like a hobbyist who has very little real world embedded experience to me.

A engineer highly experienced with STM32xx will use the most appropriate late model STM32 MCU for any new project requiring it. He has a dazzling multitude of models and package sizes to choose from with low end STM MCUs available for cents in 100,000+ quantities.

He wouldn't risk his job to use some old OBSOLETE 8 bit AVR in a new design, except in your wildest dreams.



 

Offline Mr. Scram

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Re: Why Arduino users so agressive?
« Reply #68 on: August 22, 2019, 06:38:18 am »
If you have no expertise regarding "hugely complicated ultra fast MCUs", what leads you to believe that you can make this comparison ?

What you call "hugely complicated ultra fast MCUs", I call "immensely capable modern MCU's that are a designers dream come true".

Newer DOES almost always equate to "more suited to the job", to deny that is to assume that brains far smarter than yours or mine were wasting their time and  billions of dollars in embedded chip manufacture for no reason at all.

Given that ST's shares doubled in value in 2017, they must be doing something right ?
So Mr. 001, you say you have a more suitable part for our products? What made you come to this conclusion? It's newer you say? I'm interested. It's designed by people you feel are smarter than us? Convincing. It's the most complicated and least proven part we could find and our design team has no experience with it? You have half a dozen other reasons not related to the actual suitability of the MCU? Well 001, sign us up! Make sure we slap that puppy every design. Respin the boards if you have to!

You could stir the pot more subtly but it's certainly hilarious! :-DD
 

Offline garethw

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Re: Why Arduino users so agressive?
« Reply #69 on: August 22, 2019, 06:50:08 am »
And here we go again! [emoji1787]


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Online JPortici

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Re: Why Arduino users so agressive?
« Reply #70 on: August 22, 2019, 07:03:47 am »
High priests of assembly, lol. When someone starts preaching about assembly, today, there's a 90% chance he did some assembly 20 years ago and is now talking out of his ass. Beware the preacher.

The guys who really know their stuff (not me), tend to help when asked. And their answers are infuriatingly like they came out of a datasheet. If I could understand the manual, I wouldn't be asking! :) The reason for this is they understand the stuff so well, they give answers that are carefully crafted to be unequivocally correct. And this is how technical documents are written.

First several months on the Microchip forums, I got the impression some guys were just copypasta'ing crap to answer questions. Over time, I figure out, no. They just understand to a higher level. The guys that know their stuff aren't out there preaching; they're tired of dealing with dummies. It's the lower level disciples that go out and do the preaching.

 :clap:
yes.
And everytime i tell guys to go read the datasheet or go look in the product page i expect them to either have an "ooooh" moment or at least read the freaking documentation and come back with at least an idea of what it is really that they are not understanding

some times you even get the prick who believe he is being treated like a child (instead of being treated as a student) and starts telling the compiler guys to fuck off because they know nothing. Those are the funniest moments
 

Offline techman-001

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Re: Why Arduino users so agressive?
« Reply #71 on: August 22, 2019, 07:13:19 am »
If you have no expertise regarding "hugely complicated ultra fast MCUs", what leads you to believe that you can make this comparison ?

What you call "hugely complicated ultra fast MCUs", I call "immensely capable modern MCU's that are a designers dream come true".

Newer DOES almost always equate to "more suited to the job", to deny that is to assume that brains far smarter than yours or mine were wasting their time and  billions of dollars in embedded chip manufacture for no reason at all.

Given that ST's shares doubled in value in 2017, they must be doing something right ?
So Mr. 001, you say you have a more suitable part for our products? What made you come to this conclusion? It's newer you say? I'm interested. It's designed by people you feel are smarter than us? Convincing. It's the most complicated and least proven part we could find and our design team has no experience with it? You have half a dozen other reasons not related to the actual suitability of the MCU? Well 001, sign us up! Make sure we slap that puppy every design. Respin the boards if you have to!

You could stir the pot more subtly but it's certainly hilarious! :-DD

No no no!

Your competitors want you to keep on using obsolete MCU's in your products, they love you just as you are and would hate you to change a single thing!
 

Offline hamster_nz

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Re: Why Arduino users so agressive?
« Reply #72 on: August 22, 2019, 07:28:44 am »
Wow! It isn't just Arduino users who are agressive.

It all looks like hysteresis, band gaps, local minima and quantum leaps to me.

People (and companies) need compelling reasons to jump to new platforms and tools. The more tightly bound you are to a platform, the bigger the kick required to break free.

I personally think that the Arduino+AVR crowd are missing out of they stick with the original H/W, and would be better served moving to Micropython on a 32-bit platform with an IDE like uPyCraft for the low barrier to entry embedded platform... Like the micro:bit perhaps.

... but that would require a very big kick to get them out of their rut.

« Last Edit: August 22, 2019, 07:36:42 am by hamster_nz »
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Offline techman-001

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Re: Why Arduino users so agressive?
« Reply #73 on: August 22, 2019, 08:25:59 am »
Wow! It isn't just Arduino users who are agressive.

It all looks like hysteresis, band gaps, local minima and quantum leaps to me.

People (and companies) need compelling reasons to jump to new platforms and tools. The more tightly bound you are to a platform, the bigger the kick required to break free.

I personally think that the Arduino+AVR crowd are missing out of they stick with the original H/W, and would be better served moving to Micropython on a 32-bit platform with an IDE like uPyCraft for the low barrier to entry embedded platform...

... but that would require a very big kick to get them out of their rut.

I'm not trying to convince anyone to change from Arduino, I say 'use what works for you'.

However ... anyone who quotes a Arduino mantra by way of trying to claim that AVR is in *any way* superior to ARM Cortex-M  is just begging for a rebuttal from someone like me who has the experience to know otherwise.

Let's take an example of a product dear to eevblogs heart, the 121GW multi meter. What is the MCU in that ?

Is it a AVR ? is it a PIC ?

It's only a multimeter, surely it doesn't need one of those 1000 plus page manual STM Micros ??

I'm sure a Mega328 is PLENTY, just find the Arduino 121GW 'library' and it's done ... 5 minutes with a $5 Arduino Nano board. Perfect! Just ask RMB.

OH HEAVENS!!! it's a ST ARM Cortex M3 processor !!

Now Dave was very tactful about why the designer removed the initial PIC MCU giving no reasons why that might have been so as to not upset anyone and I applaud his marketing skills.

Dave did however go on to rave about how the SD card facility made upgrading and other features very easy in this outstanding instrument which had it been the original PIC would have required a cable, a PickitX or some hardware and lots of warranty returns for bricked units and angry buyers advertising in every online forum "to stay away from this junk".

The designers knew what they were doing  :-+

If I didn't already have a decent multimeter, I'd be buying a 121GW tomorrow and as it is I recommend the 121GW to anyone who asks me "what multimeter should I buy".

It's a no brainer, ... thanks to STM32.
 

Offline L1L1

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Re: Why Arduino users so agressive?
« Reply #74 on: August 22, 2019, 08:29:47 am »
Hi

I`m old tech from 70th without any programming background
But interested in AVR too just for fun
It is so funny and EASY to solder and program AVR  now :-+

But every time I google for AVR projects I`m furious about agressive Arduino users  :rant:

Is Arduino a sect?  :-//

I've seen quite the opposite: arrogant and sometimes aggressive behavior from "old-school" engineers towards the Arduino or maker community. You can spot it here sometimes in these forums.

The typical scenario is:
  • Someone has built a simple circuit with an AVR chip and some Arduino code but has a question/problem, needs a bit of help.
  • Old-school" guy will respond with one of these answers:
    • Why are you using Arduino? It's for kids, it's bloated, it's badly designed, etc.
    • Technical mumbo-jumbo about the "poor" choice of the op-amp, adc, mosfet, or whatever, designed to show that the "old-school" guy is very smart/knowledgeable.
    • Harsh comments about the bad layout of the boards or the schematic
  • None of the responses help the user with his problem/question, which is often simple.

My take is that these "old-school" guys feel insecure about the fact that tons of new people are doing electronics today for fun, and it's never been so easy. They are no longer the gatekeepers of a complex world unavailable to the profane. They feel that it's unfair that the Arduino UNO sold boatloads while their own project, which is vastly superior in terms of complexity, design, layout, EMC and safety only sold a dozen (costing 20 times more).

Be kind. Be patient. Have fun. Share your knowledge and make it accessible to people who know much less than you. This is what Dave Jones does and this one of the reasons for his success IMO.
 
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