Let’s talk about solder. I know, it’s not sexy on the level of, say, agentic AI writing great code and putting embedded software developers out of work, but it’s pretty darned attractive, if you ask me. It’s also pretty cool if you ask one of the 500 or so folks in a group I belong to who were recently taught to solder. Those half a thousand people were thrilled to melt a little metal to make a badge with a couple of blinky LEDs.
During the last decade this same group (members of the maker space I belong to) have taught thousands of people how to solder. Our students have ranged in age from four to 97. They are almost always absolutely thrilled to see the LEDs illuminate for the first time, and genuinely delighted to have made an electronic something, no matter how simple. But here’s the issue: Why do so few people know how to solder before they stumble across our little oasis of making things?
The ones who surprise me the most are the university students—the university students in electrical engineering programs. I mean, I’m happy to show them which end of the soldering iron to hold, but isn’t this something that someone, somewhere, should have taught them in the process of helping them become electrical engineers?
Now, the gulf between theoretical knowledge and practical application is famously wide but it’s hard to imagine someone working up the enthusiasm to launch into (at least) four years of study for a profession without actually building things within the discipline. I suppose that breadboards, jumpers, modules, and SBCs can do a lot, but there’s something about using solder—the visceral feeling of metal flowing around metal to make a physical circuit—that’s simply magical.
In this issue of Circuit Cellar we’re featuring two great projects with Joe Croft’s Nixiestat and the Warner and Wilson Raspberry Pi Pico recreation of Super Mario Brothers. Add in Vivian Auge’s look at the IBM Granite AI engine for embedded application designers and Matt Oppenheim’s tutorial on a scheduler for the smallest of processor boards and there is plenty of inspiration for those who want to put their hands on components and start building things.
So my question this month is this: Am I living in the past? Is soldering one of those skills, like quickly calculating using a slide rule, that’s the sort of thing historical reenactors will show to tourists? I hope not, but then again, I still remember a couple of application launch sequences for TECO on an LSI-11/02 running RT-11, so I may be somewhat unusual.
The point is, I think that actually making things still matters. Here at Circuit Cellar the things we concentrate on making are embedded systems but our focus truly is on the making. There is something very real about the impact that making something has on your understanding of a subject. And there is something very primal about taking a bunch of inert things, putting them together with your own hands, and seeing the result “come alive” as it begins to function. So, go out and make something. And maybe teach someone how to solder. They’ll thank you for it later.
email: c.franklin@circuitcellar.com
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PUBLISHED IN CIRCUIT CELLAR MAGAZINE • April #430 – Get a PDF of the issue
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Curtis Franklin has been a journalist working in the computer and technology fields for more than forty years. From his early career as a columnist at Computer Shopper and the founder of the BYTE Testing Lab, he has covered computing devices from handheld to supercomputing and applications from trivial to life-altering. In 1988, he was the first editor of an exciting startup publication that was then called Circuit Cellar INK. Since then, he has edited and written for publications including ComputerWorld, NetworkWorld, InfoWorld, InformationWeek, and Dark Reading. Most recently, he was Principal Analyst for Cybersecurity Management at Omdia.
Curtis co-wrote one of the first books on podcasting and has been a host or co-host on more than 500 episodes of various podcasts, including hundreds of episodes of This Week in Enterprise Technology, a production of the TWiT Podcast Network.
When not telling stories of computers and the people who make them, Curtis is an amateur radio operator (KG4GWA), an artist, and a Florida Master Naturalist. He’s also active in the maker community, working on the teams that produce Maker Faire Orlando and Maker Faire Miami.
