There have been comments occasionally about the steep learning curve involved with stuff from JeeLabs. This is very unfortunate, but perhaps not totally surprising. Nor easy to avoid, I’m afraid…

The thing is, I love to get into new adventures, and I also really want to bring across the joy and excitement of it all. But what’s new for me may not make much sense to you, and what’s new for you may not be new for me.

There is a huge variety in what you, collectively, dear readers, may or may not already know and in what interests y’all. Even if we narrow the field down to “computing stuff tied to the physical world”, as this weblog does.

My approach has been to just throw everything together and write new posts in a fairly chaotic whatever-comes-to-mind-first order. Sometimes about raw electronics or micro-controllers, sometimes about hardware or software techniques, and often simply about what catches my interest and keeps me occupied. My plat du jour, so to speak.

There’s a problem with this, and it’s perhaps gradually getting worse: it may not help you with getting started. This daily weblog has an alphabetical and chronological index, listed at the bottom of each page, and updated from time to time – but that’s a bit like trying to learn how to swim by jumping in at the deep end, isn’t it?

A few days ago, my daughter asked me about how to learn programming. I was shocked – because I don’t know !!!

What I do know is that learning something as complex as programming really well takes years (my take on it is at least a decade, seriously!). Of course you don’t have to learn everything in depth and become a pro at it all. More often than not, we just want to make a nice sandwich, not become a master chef or start a new career.

Malcolm Gladwell has written several times about the “10,000 hours rule”, which says that to get really well at something you have to throw at least 10,000 hours at it. Learning, struggling, wrestling, pondering, agonizing, and… enjoying your progress. For at least 10,000 hours, i.e. 10 years of 4-hours-a-day – being obsessed helps!

Wanna learn something really well? My advice: start today. And prepare yourself for a fascinating marathon.

The trick IMO, is to define success in smaller steps than you might normally do. Got a blinking LED? Celebrate!

Here’s the secret: there’s an incredible (yet vastly under-appreciated) advantage of open source hardware and software. That advantage is that every hurdle can be overcome. You’re not fighting a closed system, nor a puzzle which only others can solve. You’re fighting the challenge of figuring it all out. With nothing but hardware and software which can be 100% inspected and documentation which can be found. When stuck, you can have access to people who know more about it and are often willing to help you along to solve your specific puzzle.

Let me rub it in: there are no show-stoppers in this game. The worst that can happen is that you run into real-world limitations of either atoms or bits or time, but there’s an immense body of knowledge out there. Get ready for this, because here’s a fact for you: if it can be done, then you can do it. And if it can’t you can find out why. This is technology – it works on logic and insight, all the way down.

But there are two constraints: 1) it takes time and effort, and 2) nobody is perfect.

What this means is that sometimes it will take more time and effort to get to the bottom of a problem and solve it. And we all make mistakes, cut corners, run out of steam, or grow impatient at times. Part of the game.

I’m no different. I didn’t get to figure out things better than others. I stumble and fight as much as anyone, of course. But I do spend time and try to push through – especially when I get frustrated. Because I know there’s an answer to it. Always – though sometimes unexpected or unsatisfying (“it couldn’t possibly work, because …”).

Back to the real issue: how to get started with all this stuff.

Ok, to stay close to home let’s assume you want to learn more about “computing stuff tied to the physical world”. If you’re starting from scratch (which is a relative concept), my suggestion would be to look for example projects which interest you, and start off by trying to repeat the same project. Find a web site or a book describing a project which fascinates you, and … spend time with it, just reading. If it sounds too daunting to reproduce, then it probably is – in that case, look for a simpler project to get your feet wet cq. cut your teeth in. You’ll get a much bigger boost from succeeding with a simpler project at first, and then tackling the bigger one.

I used to have lots of practical experience in electronics, from years of fiddling around with it as a teenager. Yet here’s the project I picked as first one to get back into this game: a trivial electronics kit. It was a no-brainer in terms of complexity, and there was virtually no risk that I’d fail at assembling it. Sure enough, it worked. And guess what: this little project got me excited enough again to … write over 900 weblog posts, and spend the last few years fiddling with today’s hardware.

The reason it seems to work for me, is what Steve Jobs once described as: The journey is the reward. So true.

If you can set your goals and expectations such that you get a really nice mix of learning experiences (i.e. struggles ending in new insight) and successes, then you’re in for a wonderful journey. It’ll last a lifetime, if you want it to.

I will try to help where I can, because that’s one of my central goals with this weblog, but I’m not going to turn this site into a handholding step-by-step and just-follow-me kind of place. Because the second goal of this weblog is to encourage creative work. Which is what you get to once you get past some initial hurdles, and are (at least partly) on your way to becoming a 10,000 hour master of some topic aligned with your own interests.

The “steepness” of this weblog is not there to frustrate, of course – it’s unavoidable, IMO. And I encourage you to bite the bullet with each bump you run into. It’s part of the game to be able to find your way in, and when you do you will have gained the experience that everything in this field can be explored, learned, and reasoned about.

I’m not handing out pre-packaged fish, I’m trying to show you the fun that comes from fishing!

Having said that, I do have a request for y’all, dear readers: if you’ve wrestled your way through some of these weblog posts, and came out wishing that something very specifc had been presented differently, or summarized, or linked to, then please do let me know (in the comments or by email). Most people who struggle and come out on top quickly move on to the next challenge, happy they now understand something better than before. But you can do your fellow future readers and strugglers a huge favor by explaining what the difficulty was. It’s often as simple as “if you only had mentioned at the start that …” and things can sometimes becomes so much clearer. I’m at the writing end of this weblog, see, and I never know where the confusion or lack of detail sets in. Please help me learn – about you, about how to reduce unnecessary steepness, and about all my mistakes, of course.

Anyway. Onwards with the adventures!