4 ms·

Using more powerful hardware as an excuse to make shitty software is incredibly flawed.

• liamdiprose 7y ago
  Some friends of mine are entry-level developers that work alone on an Arduino/C++ codebase. Baremetal development and C++'s bad library support encourages them to write huge amounts of their own, very bad, code. They've taken a year to write the functional equivalent of a few hundred lines of Python and some packages. Their codebase would improve immensely if they used a more powerful chip to run Linux and Python instead.
• spookthesunset 7y ago
  What a bunch of gatekeeping fuddy-duddy nonsense. Give me a break... If newer hardware makes it cheaper and easier to make cool shit while maintaining the price point and power budgets of previous generations, who gives a shit? This new stuff makes tinkering with hardware way more accessible than before and that is a good thing for everybody.
  • jdietrich 7y ago
    We have every right to gatekeep when Arduino are targeting industrial IoT developers. I don't want "tinkerers" designing products that could control industrial equipment or have access to sensitive user data. Arduino is excellent for what it was originally designed for - an easy, accessible platform for artists and non-engineers to experiment and prototype. Arduino are now reaching well beyond that market and targeting more serious applications, so we are entirely right to question whether a) Arduino's design trade-offs are acceptable in mass-market products and b) whether we really want to lower barriers to entry in this area. Personally, I think the answers are a) no and b) absolutely not. If you need the hand-holding that Arduino offers, you have absolutely no right to ask a user to plug your widget into their network. Engineers are in a position of trust and we have a moral obligation to treat that position with absolute seriousness.