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Comment by nunobrito

7 days ago

It is basically the same thing, don't understand either why it would harder.

The only thing is to add the ESP32 module on the addons since it doesn't come enabled by default. Arduino isn't good for projects with more than 5 source code files, it is an awful IDE beyond the basic things you can pack on a single source code file.

Always had so many difficulties handling the IDE defects, basically it can crash when starting and every now and then will just refuse to upload the firmware. The other part are libraries, really difficult to setup all the needed libraries for larger code bases.

On that sense, Visual Code with PlatformIO went far beyond. Just open the project there and the libraries are taken care. The connection to boards is more robust. I'm not so sure how to feel with this sale to Qualcomm, it just feels that it is going there to die.

Quite the difference from the early days where Arduino had such energy and the tools would bring almost anyone into microntrollers with such ease.

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nunobrito

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lovehashbrowns  7 days ago

As a complete beginner to hardware stuff, I do find the Arduino Cloud thing to be pretty compelling. Being able to push out updates over the cloud is nice! Buuuut.. once I'm mostly done with a project, there's just no need at all for it anymore. The Arduino I'm using for a receipt printer is just sitting there and now the cloud bit doesn't do anything for me.

And the problem I have is that ESP32s aren't much more difficult to set up nowadays, are wildly cheaper, and I'm soso excited to start messing around with ESP-NOW which I don't think Arduino has? But having like 10 ESP32s for messing around freely is more valuable than the cloud thing for me. And there are some super fun projects for ESP32 also like the Cheap Yellow Display thing. I ordered what I thought was one display, except it was 3, and I thought I would have to provide my own ESP32s but nope, they come with them. And these three CYDs were cheaper than a single Arduino it's actually crazy.

  • nunobrito  7 days ago

    Yeah, ESPnow is pretty good. I'm using it more than LoRa because all ESP32 come with it and is really cheap, whereas with LoRa is all the trouble with an additional module that costs 3x more than an ESP32.

    That yellow display is pretty good. I've built a tiny operating system for it, it is an unbelievable hardware for the cost of the material.

kbar13  7 days ago

agree. when arduino ide first came out it was great (for the times). and to be fair at that time vscode was not a thing. but it's a big ? why arduino did not just go all in on vscode once it was clear where the market leader in IDE was headed

  • spookie  7 days ago

    Well, it's a bad idea to rely on Microsoft in some manner

    • creshal  7 days ago

      VS Code has enough momentum by now that Microsoft couldn't kill it even if it wanted to. And a lot of the arduino-side work would involve creating/tweaking LSPs to their ideosyncrasies and making IDE-agnostic compilers... all of which is IDE agnostic and makes Arduino more useful to all users.

      And, worst case, they could take it all to IntelliJ or other IDE vendors and quickly spin out an Arduino-branded IDE that isn't raw sewage.

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