Re: Lua, Robotics, and a 13 year old...

[Nathaniel Lewis <linux.robotdude@...>]

It all depends on how hard the kid is going to try honestly.  I am 17
and I had been programming AVRs in C++ for two years at 13.  Also what
kind of platforms are you going to be using?  I saw NXT, and there is
pbLua for it.  What others were you thinking of?  AVR, PIC, other?
				Nathaniel

On Mon, 2010-07-26 at 01:16 +0800, KHMan wrote:
> Mike McGonagle wrote:
> > A friend of mine has a 13 year old kid who is interested in Robots. I
> > am wanting to suggest that he learn a programming language (Lua in
> > particular) and learn a bit about building a computer (as Robots are
> > specialized computers). As Lua appears to be a language designed for
> > embedded systems, I was wondering if anyone out there could give me
> > some links to sites that deal with Robotic projects that are using
> > Lua, so that I could pass them along to the kid to encourage him to
> > learn Lua. Also, as a related topic, if there are any projects that
> > are dealing with AI, that would be great, too. That would be something
> > else for him down the road.
> 
> It's the wrong "embedded", I think. Lua's emphasis is on embedding 
> into software programs, e.g. like VisualBasic in Excel or Word, 
> but much better. Not the hardware embedded as in MCUs.
> 
> There are Lua for microcontrollers, but they are not really 
> 13-year-old-proof.
> 
> So there's the no-brainer Lego stuff. But cheap servos are so very 
> attractive these days, however going the non-nicely-packaged route 
> would be a bit more difficult, though there are things like 
> Arduino or a BASIC-based board to make things easier.
>