Learning New Technology Is Challenging

On nights and weekends, I've been playing with Arduino controllers. I have a couple of projects I'm working through (building a robot that can roll around with "eyes" to avoid obstacles). I've also been trying to work with STM32 controllers, because in a lot of ways, they're more powerful than an Arduino. However, I've hit major snags getting these chips to communicate with my computer. I was setting up a old laptop with Linux to see if that works better when I hit a breakthrough. I finally was able to see the controller through software. Now I just have to figure out how to get a bootloader on the darned thing and I think I'll be off and running.

The issue is, the documentation out there on these STM32 chips is... poor (trying to be kind). It's not that things are not well documented, they are. However, they're documented by people with a large amount of existing knowledge of electronics, mostly for people with an equally large amount of knowledge of electronics. Yeah, I've been working with computers for over 30 years, and playing on game systems since the original Pong, but I'm not an electronics expert, at all, in any sense. In fact, I'm still struggling with a lot of the basics.

Something to think about when you're setting your training, whether in-house, inter-team, or external, is who your audience is. If you're teaching something introductory, you may need to assume zero knowledge on the part of the people you're trying to teach. And if they have to have other knowledge first, you're going to need to find that or make it so you can provide it. The last thing you want to do is leave people in a lurch where they want to learn what you are teaching, but just can't. Granted, some topics really do require a ton of prior knowledge and sometimes, people just won't be able to learn without that prior knowledge.

Now, to see if I can get that bootloader on the controller. Fingers crossed!

Grant Fritchey

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