303: Kids, Turn in Your Chips
Jay Carlson, a PhD student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, discusses his pedagogical approach to teaching embedded systems, arguing against traditional lecture-based models in favor of project-based learning and the Dreyfus model of skill acquisition. He critiques the use of Arduino for education, advocating instead for bare-metal microcontrollers like the PIC16 and STM32 to teach fundamental concepts like memory-mapped peripherals and debugging. Carlson also shares insights from his blog posts on the '$1 Microcontroller' and '3 cent micros,' highlighting how ultra-low-cost chips are changing the landscape of hardware design and prototyping.