How I Reclaimed Alpha Status by Programming Electronics

Hi,

I'm a Kimchi Sammich and I am quite tasty. I used to have ADD so bad I couldn't assemble a $7 lego pack when I was a kid.

I want to share my experience over that past 3 years with you about how I started programming electronics and went from zero to 1 (you'll get it eventually).

Years ago, I found myself working every day of the week, starting around 2pm and finishing as late as 11:30 some nights. I made good money which I won't go into here but I wanted to do something MORE. I also needed a skill to make myself financially secure for the future.

While attending University back in the States a spark was born within me while watching the original Star Wars trilogy. There was something about the set designs and lack of CGI that made it feel so real even in 2007. I wanted to understand how machines work and alter them eventually designing my own.

I knew that I would need to learn electronics which seemed insurmountable at the time and programming as well. Gee WTF was I thinking??? I watched alot of YT vids at the time, the "hack" channels which eventually started showing Arduino projects. But the hack channels showed so many projects I had no knowledge about or wasn't interested in. I thought the name was shit and it was fairly expensive and not well documented at the time so I ignored it.

Fast forward a few years. Somehow the fire was growing inside me. I wanted to make SOMETHING FUCKING AMAZING before I died, which I felt would be fairly soon.
Nuclear tensions were on the rise in Korea where I reside and my job was paying well but I foresaw and accurately predicted its decline in value...people were not going to pay as well as they had for much longer....Fucking K-Pop...ruined everything...oh and Korea opened the floodgates on immigration because less people were getting married and even less having kids or at least having FEWER kids. So, the government welcomed cheap labor by the droves.

I was studying alot of materials of how to tap into hidden potential etc and came across some fantastic works which I may mention later, it is not popular at all but simplified my thinking in a way I never thought possible and allowed my creative self to slowly thaw like Han in Carbonite.

I was staying up to 2 or sometimes 5am looking for what I could do to prepare for my future cuz I deserve more damnit!
Arduino and Raspberry Pi were becoming a mainstream thing among nerds and geeks due to their versatility and slightly easier to use format (more on that bullshit later...)

So I bought an Arduino (GOD I hate that name) kit that had basic electronics components (LEDs, Motor, Servos, transistors, capacitors, resistors, etc). It was like $30 which was actually an incredible deal (because the Arduino is a Chinese clone I suspect)

I had an idea for a product which came to me in a flash one day during a work break. I was in that meditative flow mindstate, walked over to the store bought pen, paper, and an icecream cone and drew out the plans on the hood of my car. I kid you not. It just flowed out, the mechanics and everything. It is still sound in concept and I used to be mechanically retarded in terms of understanding engineering or programming, etc.

I got the kit and after 2 weeks of procrastinating like a Beta I finally cracked it open and attempted to load up a blink sketch. It worked! Wow! I just copy and pasted some shit from the website but it worked. The problem was...I had no fucking clue what was going on! THAT is the beef I have with ARDWWWWEEEEEEEEENO. The code is oversimplified and doesn't give you enough control over the hardware, on top of that the ARDWWEEEEEEEEENO community just copy pastes each other's shit and post their projects for others to copy and everyone thinks they made something. Well, I challenge you to find out where most of those people are today and what other ARDWWWWEEEEENO projects they have made. Good fucking luck!

Note: I do not have this beef with Raspberry Pi as I see it as a completely different, more sexy animal with its own complexities...I will get one soon though....SOON!

So after trying to get the blue chip to make servos move for over a week they finally did and I still had no idea why it worked, there were not many books at the time just the same shitty Arduino site that exists today. There is something about its layout that just sucks.

So, I threw that shit around, against the wall at least once, and finally sought a better way to do this. A year later I felt guilty for not making ANYTHING with my kit. I wanted to use ALL of it. So I googled and finally found a book on Amazon by Elliot Williams titled "AVR Programming: Learning to Write Software for Hardware" published by MAKE. The book was exactly what I needed. He explains in a humorous and enjoyable way with project tutorials how to program the AVR chip which is the heart of the Arduino in C language which is ideal for hardware programming and gives you a solid foundation in programming.

It took me 2 more years and LOTS of struggle. I'm smart and intuitive in other ways but engineering I'm retarded but that's ok, I can learn, it's just about consistency and pushing when you wanna slam that shit and cry like a Fornite streamer.

I struggled to understand the concepts of the programming and how electronic components work.

Wanna know how I finally "got it" ?

1. A calm happy approach
2. Note taking and reflecting on what I learned, really reviewing and explaining the ocncepts out loud
3. Practicing the same projects over and over
4. Keeping my ideas simple and adding to them little by little, seriously go REALLY slow in the beginning

I followed this pattern and sometimes yeah I was pissed and got drunk and fumbled with the wiring and somehow made it work.

Eventually you WILL get it whether its programming computer applications or electronics, etc.

This goes into a deeper topic that I want to cover briefly.

Programming electronics taught me to be patient with myself.
It showed me work ethic.
It taught me how to imagine engineering principles and motion even without any formal expensive college training.
It taught me to man up a little more and maintain my vision and passion until I made SOMEthing no matter how small.
It showed me the creative process and trained me how to think a little more logically.

It has been a journey...and its just starting. That's the mindset I have adopted...no matter what point I'm at in the future, I will always be just beginning my journey, because with this skill/hobby/career is limitless. Once you feel like you have a grasp on what is going on, you feel POWERFUL. You see your limitations and see all of the possible paths that lay before you. You have the POWER to manifest cool moving shit to reality and you have the choice to increase that power until the day you die...oh....and you can also make a SHIT TON OF MONEY, that is if you are applying your skills to the right market niche and have put in the time to get good at it.

So, if anything I hope you enjoyed reading how this guy finally put that $7 lego pack to shame and regained a handle on his future. Good luck!