Hi again,
Regarding the Brainpad C# - introduction samples I saw that these are working in a while - loop instead of being event-driven.
Until now nearly all samples for GHI-Gadgeteer are event-driven and this is for me the better way.
In my lessons I found out that for beginners it is as easy to start with events as with a while-loop but it is difficult to switch from while-loop to events later. So I prefer starting with events and I think the introduction should be changed according to this.
For all other mainboards it is made very easy by GHI to use this. Why not with the Brainpad?
What do you think?
I think events are easy your students because they used gadgeteer before. We are trying to keep the introduction as simple as possible. For example, an educator may go from teaching the basics on the BrainPad but then start a lab on building a robot. This robot may not be gadgeteer and events will not be used much.
There is actually a lesson planned for robotics.
Please keep the feedback coming. Thank you.
@ Gus I’m with @ mflume events are an important base level concept and applies to all levels of computing and robotics. I’ve got a couple of groups of FIRST Robotics Competition high school students to teach coming up and I’ll be teaching them about events with Gadgeteer.
Now as a disclaimer I have not tried the Brainpad, but have used Gadgeteer to teach a pile of classes so maybe I’m biased to the ‘correct’ way of doing things because of my Gadgeteer experience.
When I get back I’ll have to order a BrainPad and start playing with it as it strikes me as being very cool, it’s just been difficult to find some open time.
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@ all who read this…
My pupils reach from absolute beginners at the age of 16 to guys which have more than 5 years experince in programming at the age of 35.
At the moment I teach software development for Windows with C# and microcontrollers with GCC C++.
20 years ago I decided to switch over to event-driven programming on all platforms I use in my lessons.
E.g. my controller - programs all run with an nearly empty while-loop at the bottom. All the execution happens in timer-events or other Interrupts.
during the while-loop I send the CPU into a sleep-state.
One reason for this is, that mobile devices get more and more important and power-consumption is a main target.
Also it makes no sense to do event-driven programming in C# for desktop - programs and to use another approach for microcontrollers. I found out that this leads to confusion for the pupils.
All in all I think that event-driven programming is the future and the future started already 20 years ago…
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@ Duke Nukem - we are trying to make three info class an option for 12 year old. A secondary class can always be added for events.
Events are great and the right way to program. However, very young developers and students coming from the arduino and mbed world will probably not find it easy.
@ mflume - do you mean you want changes on the brain pad object or just the material? If the material them we can add that.
@ Gus,
I would like to have a brainpad in the tool section lof Visual Studio just like the other boards and a programming template which is like they are for the other boards, including timers and the onboard devices like display, buzzer and so on as pre-connected devices.