On 15 June 2015 at 22:55, Mark J. Blair <[email protected]> wrote: > >> On Jun 15, 2015, at 13:46 , Pontus Pihlgren <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> On Mon, Jun 15, 2015 at 04:55:57PM +0000, tony duell wrote: >>> >>> Unfortunately I believe you. Use at least a thousand times more components >>> than >>> you need to. >> >> Actually it's just two, a Teensy and a usb cable. (Sorry, I couldn't >> resist). > > LOL! I must admit that I used to scorn those durned kids using Arduinos to do > the job of a 555. But then I pulled my head out of my ass and realized that > times change, nowadays a microcontroller is as cheap and common component as > a 555 was[..]
I think I'm reasonably well into the pragmatic camp (ref. Chuck G.'s post). But one point about 555s and Arduinos is that I couldn't build a 555 more easily than I could build the MCU on an Arduino board (a more relevant comparision might be a 555 vs a Propeller chip) - they're all black boxes to me. Even a transistor, to some extent - I know exactly how it works, well, as much as any other EE anyway, but I couldn't build one. Or a vacuum tube..
