cheap arduinos on OS X

[Sam Harmon]

Good news,

It looks like the CH340G drivers for OS X will in fact work after a reboot.

I now have one of the uber-cheap Chinese Arduinos running Gameduino2 sketches (I figured they would be the most complicated examples to test against), and they're working with no problems.

installation instructions: http://kiguino.moos.io/2014/12/31/how-to-use-arduino-nano-mini-pro-with-CH340G-on-mac-osx-yosemite.html

Sam

[Joe ODonnell]

 That's fantastic. With cheap Arduino's things like widespread mesh networks and an ambient internet of things can't be far off. 

The maker/programmer movement has years more of astounding developments ahead of it!

[Ross Bochnek]

Cool, Sam!  Tonight, could we download the Mac version of S4A from http://s4a.cat/ to give those boards a test with that application?  Thanks!

[Joe ODonnell]

S4A is a programming system that is easy to use for beginners. This ties into some big computer history news that happened recently,

the source code for the original Microsoft Basic was released:

http://www.itworld.com/article/2872659/the-source-code-behind-microsoft-basic-for-6502-comes-to-light.html

 Microsoft Basic was the first popular application for the first popular microcomputer, the Altair 8800. MS Basic went on to be 

the default operating system and/or programming language for several of the varied best selling microcomputers in the 80's,

before the IBM PC architecture became dominant. This included the CBM-Pet, Vic-20, Commodore-64, later versions of the Apple II

and more as well. Because of that it was the language that many of today's IT professionals at all levels first learned on. 

It was also the first product of the Micro--soft corporation, it's success ultimately resulted in Microsoft and Bill Gates as we know them today.

 The MS Basic source code is valuable to study for a few reasons. The first being it's historic place as the software that launched

the modern computer revolution. It came out before DRI's cpm operating system and the first gen Apple II os, which were

also foundational. What were the business and technical reasons why this software was so successful? The answer

to both those questions is essentially the same-the Basic language on the Altair was a revolution in ease of use for doing useful

work with a budget computer. What gave it that ease of use? Two things, it was an interpreter focused on relatively easy string programming,

and had built in memory management. The source code is valuable to study to see how it did those two things.

 S4A is similarly focused on ease of use, with a newly budget friendly type of computer that will enable many entirely new types of products.

The same types of revolutionary conditions that existed for MS Basic and the Altair in the 70's, exist today with S4A, Arduino and the Internet of things.

 Here's another note-what is the Basic language? What makes it different and easier to use than other languages? Why is it sometimes

downplayed by programmers? The MS Basic source code helps to get a clearer answer to those questions. Basic is an interpreted

language focused on beginner tasks like string manipulation, handles any memory management needed, and does not include

language features that could cause further problems with memory management. The lack of those features, namely structures

and pointers, prevents many programs and algorithms from being written in an efficient and desirably conceptually clear way in Basic source code.
So it's basically a language with training wheels. Despite that, like any Turing complete language, any programming task can be completed with it.

 Something significant happened since MS Basic was popular-first the compiled C language became popular, and than started to decline

in favor of semi and fully interpreted languages like Java, Perl, Ruby and Python. The direct memory level structures and pointers of C that were once thought

to be necessary for complex algo and data structure work, were shown to not be strictly required for advanced coding, and replaceable by 
other approaches in interpreted memory managed languages. So the legacy of MS Basic lives on to this day, and will into the future

in the form of Scratch and more.