How have some of you gone beyond programming?

Question

So every time I see a cool physical piece of technology on the front page like that ultraleap haptics thing I see I get kind of morose.I love programming and I've been writing code since I was very young and I love the power it has and the ability to seemingly create something from nothing.However the things I create don't interact with the physical world or have the same sense of permanence as say a robot or a haptics system. They're effectively ephemeral, relatively speaking.Has anyone picked up like electrical engineering or mechanical engineering type projects on the side and how did you break out of only programming into that more physical space?

the_only_law · Accepted Answer

Tbh I&rsquo;ve kinda drifted from programming more and more. I can&rsquo;t escape it, but I find myself much more interested in other things nowadays. Over the past year that&rsquo;s been a handful of more physical side, as you note. Notably over the past year I&rsquo;ve become fascinated by lasers and other applications of light and RF. Unfortunately the things that make me weak at programming make working with these things near impossible. Not to mention the cost of tools involved. It was pretty common to come up with a cool project idea and find hardware that would make my like 100X easier only to find that its not sold to consumers and if it is its way outside of anything I could afford.The most practical think I&rsquo;ve turned to is retro networking. It still involves some programming as a lot of this stuff needs hacks to make it work together these days, but I try to avoid it when possible.

PaulHoule · Answer

Get an arduino.