I'm just a little younger than you and I think we might be at the forum's children's table.
if it weren't for failing health, getting old is delightful, stupid things that tripped me up when i was younger are very trivial now.
I think the microcontroller fad is nearing an end, i barely see anything interesting on even the 'duino front. fairly certain we'll never see an 08M3.
@premelec, I hope you will visit the forum again to know about the people here that you have affected with your news. Yours and my first posts were in 2005 and 2006; we’ve both been here a long time, and you have always been part of the warm and tolerant environment. I hope that you find contentment in the knowing of that.
I remember the heady years around 2005 when you first posted when a person had to log in multiple times a day just to barely keep up with the firehose of information and new projects and new chips and new features and nifty peripherals that were being introduced by Rev-Ed and by the members of the forum. Hippy had two or three helpers to keep up with all of the questions that were being asked.
Back then, we were the proof-readers of the documentation, the testers of the chips and we found the errors to be corrected and novel ways to use the product, but it was all for the benefit of the schools, and Rev-Ed has never wavered from it’s main focus – to introduce technology and programming in schools and, other than helping to improve the product, we were never central to that.
If you could graph the number of forum logins-per-day from 2005 to now, it would tell the story. That decline is why the forum has become the final bastion of folks like premelec who has made his last post and me, who at age 76 will someday soon make mine (or not), and why most of us are in approximately the same boat. Very few new faces in this group because the world has moved on. I come here when I need a “fix,” a taste of familiar and knowledgable voices who are my technology comfort-food.
If any new chips are announced or new capabilities like precision math, better I2C, etc that have been forever discussed and desired but never implemented should suddenly appear, it will be because that capability is needed in the schools not because it is needed here. But that’s fair – how many among us any longer care about precison math or I2C in the Picaxe? Precious few, I’d guess. It would have been great to have those capabilities ten years ago but now the momentum is gone and it is what it is, we were never the target audience. Programming for fun or profit is still fun or profitable, but we really are dinosaurs here. Nevertheless I’ll wear my dinosaur badge proudly and continue to visit and benefit from the knowledge and kind advice of the few who are still standing. Sincere thanks to premelec for this opportunity to pause and contemplate what has been, and what is.