!!Con 2020 - Screwing up is easier than ever before! by Joshua Wise
3Screwing up is easier than ever before! by Joshua Wise
When I was growing up, hardware was quite an expensive hobby. I got to play around some, but I never really got any good at building bigger circuits, because failure was so pricey – if I got something wrong, I had to get out all the etching chemicals again, so I didn’t try anything that I wasn’t absolutely certain of. I think of this all the time, because I feel so lucky that professional-grade manufacturing is much more affordable, and parts are much cheaper – so I can make mistakes to my heart’s content!
I feel like the best ways I’ve learned – both when I’ve built hardware, and when I’ve written software – have been from screwing up, and getting pretty fast feedback as to what went wrong. In this talk, I’ll give you explicit permission to screw up, and I’ll give you some of my most educational moments of when I screwed up – and I’ll give you some pointers so you can start screwing up at home, too!
Joshua blows up electronics less frequently, but not infrequently, when he does work for his clients (they would generally prefer him to blow up nothing at all). He is thankful that they, too, understand that blowing things up is an important part of the R&D process.