So I teach a Lego mindstorms class to 5th graders for fun on my spare time. My other classes the kids usually seek me out for any programming questions but this one class of rambunctious boys would always say they're fine when I offered to help and then when they thought I wasn't looking would ask the male teacher or would pretend to listen to my explanation to not hurt my feelings. Finally my co worker told the guys "you know guys she went to school to program she does this for a living full time when she's not here. **room goes silent** In fact she's way better at programming then me". The whole room the boys mouths were open and one kid actually said noooo. We blew those kids minds. Most quiet day of class we've ever had after that.

My best CS teacher was the most passionate dev I've ever met. He is still teaching Software Engineering at 65, and he's reached that unreachable level of nerdiness, when you are more of a philosopher than just a coder.

Random anecdote: back in 2010, we both spent Christmas week playing and prototyping with Lego Mindstorms and Android, in preparation for my bachelor thesis project!

I always wanted to be an airforce pilot since I was a kid. Then snes came, spent a great deal of hours playing so many games. I got curious on how they were created and although I did it, I always wondered why people blow on cartridges if the game won't start. Fast forward to CS, Diablo 3, Red alert. I was fascinated whenever I type something on the console and something happened, that got me excited. Add that I was using wordstar and programming HTML/CSS in school when I was just 10-11. When I turned 12, I was programming using Borland C++. It just snowballed from there, curiosity and a series of my programs working made me focus a lot of my time talking to computers (especially when I built robots using lego mindstorms). While my classmates were having a hard tim deciding what course to take in college, I was already certain since I was just a sophomore in high school. I will write and talk to computers until I wear thick glasses.

So there it is, my dev story. Apologies for a lengthy post. 😀

Do you guys think I should go for a Lego Mindstorms set as a way to start getting into robotics?

I know of a lot of people that recommend going through arduino and buying a bunch of shit and throwing it together etc. But the thing that makes me interested in Mindstorms is how everything seems to be in one place. A smart brick programmable through multiple different programming languages(for example Python, java, C) a good kit that can be really modular and built into different components, all sorts of sensors.

I just think its a good option, but if someone were to recommend a particular book or resource for Arduino or some other stuff I would definitely consider it.

So, what do you lads think?

Damn you LEGO, you get more than 450€ for this shit, but it's as fast as the brick it is. Surely, even back in 2013 you could've dome better than bloody 300Mhz and 64MB RAM?! This is the bloody hello world project and it takes you an hour to create it? And you also want like ten minutes to start maven in the first place?

My Grandma had an old PC in my childhood. That laid the stone. Then I took a "PC Basics" course in my hometown in 4th-grade, which covered Building a PC, programming it with the weird Turtle stuff and Lego Mindstorms.

Learned HTML in 4th grade. Tried C++ in 5th. Took a while to get serious, 10th grade Java gave the last kick. Studying CS now at the TUM and working as a Web Designer in parallel.

My mum signed me up for a robotics workshop with Lego mindstorms... i kept going to these workshops, doing some of them multiple times. At some point we went from graphical programming to some other kids language, than we made a robocup junior team from the kids who were like me and kept on showing up at these workshops and used arduino and C. Had a break for a year or so from coding so I could finish school, then I went studying computer science at Uni. And the rest is history.

He was not reslly my dev-teacher, he was a math/physics teacher. But he had an after school an it workshop. That was the first place where i really worked with development. I was just a bit with html, php and LEGO mindstorms but it helped me with my knowledge. He is one of the best teachers in my school. Without him I would probably making windows and doors.

Looking back I realise I had Lego Mindstorms. That had basic drag and drop programming for the robot. I could say I started there, but really only messed with it for my pretend play. Then I did data entry in HS. Never messed with until my wife made me pick a major so i would stop being a professional student. Started C++ in college. Where I work uses Excel, so I have been messing with the macros using VBA. Currently building websites for another class.