513: I’m Sorry You Learned Something

Jason Turner of C++ Weekly and Empty Crate spoke with us about the joy of puzzles, the changing directions of an interesting career, and the C++ programming language. I mean, of course we talked about C++. But only a little. 

Jason recently published Programming Puzzles Big Book: 400 pages of fun for ages 7-99, a book of puzzles for the logically minded. It teaches programming concepts as engaging puzzles: recursion, binary, assembly, Lisp, regular expressions. You may not know what you are learning but you’ll likely find you know a lot more about how computers work afterward. 

For the puzzles, paper is better than electronic. But you can also get the electronic version on LeanPub (which is better if you like to get lost in Wikipedia links).

This is not Jason’s first puzzle book, he’s made them for C++ Object Lifetime and Copy and Reference (see his Amazon and LeanPub author page for other books as well). 

If you want to catch up on C++, check out C++ Weekly With Jason Turner - YouTube. Note the playlists are useful if you are looking for a deep dive on a particular topic. 

If you want to get more out of C++ in your organization, Jason’s consulting company is Empty Crate. His contact page is there as well (or look for lefticus on most social media platforms).

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If you’re interested in how 3D printing is changing design engineering, Mouser Electronics has some great resources to check out. Their Empowering Innovation Together platform is taking a deep dive into additive manufacturing—covering smarter production, faster prototyping, and breakthrough materials that move ideas beyond prototypes into real-world products. You’ll find podcasts, expert articles, and videos that keep you informed and inspired. Sound like your thing? Head to Mouser.com/empowering-innovation and explore.

482: Reference the Same Dog Object

Dr. Colleen Lewis joined us to talk teaching pointers with stuffies, explaining inheritance through tigers, and computer science pedagogy.

Check out her YouTube channel to view her videos explaining CS concepts with physical models. These are also collected on her website: Physical Models of Java.

If you are an instructor (or thinking about teaching CS), check out Colleen’s CS Teaching Tips. You may also be interested in some other research:

Colleen is an Assistant Professor at University Illinois, Urbana-Champaign’s Siebel School of Computing and Data Science. You can find her papers on Google Scholar (including studies on teaching and learning). 

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457: Rubber Duck Phase Cancellation

Chris and Elecia chat about their ongoing efforts to create and learn. Then they answer some listener questions. 

Duck quacks do echo but the echoes seem to align in phase so that there is no interruption making the echo sounds like an extension of the quack (Mythbusters episode in which Jamie says “Quack, damn you!”)

Elecia continues to work on Making Embedded Systems, 2nd Edition. The early release copy is available on the O’Reilly Learning System.

Classpert is offering an asynchronous cohort for Elecia’s Making Embedded Systems course.  You'd be going through the class with others and there will be discussions and mentor (and Elecia’s) help on the Discord. No live classes but you get access to the best bits of the previous live classes. Class starts in September.

Tickets are on sale for the tenth annual Hackaday Supercon is Nov 3-5, 2023 in Pasadena, CA. Someone there will be giving out stickers. More details to follow on that front. 

Elecia is enjoying OrigamibyBoice Crease Pattern Class YouTube series. (It is a prereq for The Plant Psychologist’s Origami Design Class.)

Last week’s newsletter (sign up here!) had tidbits about learning the Kalman filter. Some of that came from Elecia’s blog post about it, some were fresh. (More previous newsletters.)

There doesn’t seem to be a good introduction to semantic webs in linguistics. Here is a too-dense article about Semantic Maps as Metrics on Meaning from a Linguistics Discovery Journal.

If you like the show and would like to support the show, we now take Ko-fi donations (https://ko-fi.com/embedded), as well as Patreon and reviews in your favorite podcasting app. 

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422: It’s Not a Bug, It’s a Feature

Chris and Elecia chat about origami, learning, whether to future proof tools or buy the cheaper option, simulators, and classes.

Elecia is gearing up to teach another Making Embedded Systems course. Sign up if you want to be in the Yellow Seahorses cohort! Sign up early and often. Sign up other people. Ask other people to sign themselves up and even more other people. Well, you get the idea.

Check out Wokwi! While it looks like it is for Arduino from the front page, there is a lot of work going on to support C/C++ APIs such as the one for Raspberry Pi Pico or the Rust one for the ESP32. Please ask a professor what they’d need to use Wokwi in their class!

In episode 158: Programming Is Too Difficult for Humans, we talked about the Ada language and using it on ARM cores. Learn Ada (at AdaCore).

News

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Thank you to our sponsor this week!

303: Kids, Turn in Your Chips

Jay Carlson (@jaydcarlson) is back on the show to discuss education and the techniques he’s using to teach embedded systems.

Jay has some great posts on his jaycarlson.net blog. The one related to this show was entitled “How I Teach Embedded Systems.” Jay was also on Embedded 226: Camp AVR Vs. Camp Microchip where we discussed his fantastic survey of micros in The Amazing $1 Microcontroller. We also mentioned one of his recent posts about 3 cent micros.

Teaching has many different approaches. We talked about Bloom’s taxonomy and mentioned the Dreyfus model of skill acquisition. 

227: Half of Everything Is Wrong

Anthony Navarro (@avnavarro42) of Udacity (@udacity) spoke with us about learning.

We talked about the Dreyfus model of skill acquisition (an education-oriented technical readiness level) and a little about on trunk skills vs. leaf skills.

Elecia took Udacity’s term 1 of Self-Driving Car Nanodegree and is planning to take the free AI for Robotics course next. Anthony is enjoying soldering lessons via Boldport (hear #171: Perfectly Good Being Square and Green).

Anthony noted there is a free Embedded course on Udacity.