Thread: LEGO article

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    They are out there! Galo's Avatar
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    LEGO article

    I was reading a piece of text about the defenition of IDE on wikipedia.org and i run along this rather interesting article...

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_Mindstorms

    I have just read this and in my 8 years of programming experience i've never been aware of this programming language they actualy use to build blocks for LEGO, my favorite toy when i was still a youngster, and perhaps now i know why i find programming that interesting, it has become a part of my life by now but the time i was playing with LEGO was actualy programming as well

    Does anyone on this board have any experience with this language.

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    I wouldn't say that Mindstorms is a language. It is an interesting brick to play with, though. I had one when I was younger, and I used them in college during my Robotics class. You can download a program to the RCX through the IR port. You can write the program in a variety of languages, as it says on the rest of that page.
    If I did your homework for you, then you might pass your class without learning how to write a program like this. Then you might graduate and get your degree without learning how to write a program like this. You might become a professional programmer without knowing how to write a program like this. Someday you might work on a project with me without knowing how to write a program like this. Then I would have to do you serious bodily harm. - Jack Klein

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    Quote Originally Posted by pianorain
    I wouldn't say that Mindstorms is a language. It is an interesting brick to play with, though. I had one when I was younger, and I used them in college during my Robotics class. You can download a program to the RCX through the IR port. You can write the program in a variety of languages, as it says on the rest of that page.
    The interface for UML is made with the LEGO Mindstorms system so i thought it was a certain language...
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    Man I miss my lego collection. Every couple of months I go into a toy store and have a look at the latest stuff. It used to be $100 would get you the largest set and it would be made of 1000's of bricks. Nowadays you'll be lucky to get a single person on a horse for that, and he's made of just the one, maybe two, bricks.

    The new pirate ships:
    http://www.lego.com/eng/fourplus/pirates/default.asp

    The old (I remember saving up all the money I could to buy that when I was about 6/7. Man, that was a great ship. I think I lost half the pieces within a week, but always had fun trying to rebuild it):

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    Let's do some coding! Welshy's Avatar
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    LEGO! oh how i loved the stuff, still have a cupboard full of the stuff :P including a mindstorms set.
    I got my mindstorms set before i got into programming, so i never really looked into the programming side of it, would be interesting to get it out again and have a play.....

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    Carnivore ('-'v) Hunter2's Avatar
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    I've also heard quite a bit about programming LEGO with NQC ("Not Quite C"), which you need a separate SDK for. I imagine it's quite a bit more powerful, although less pleasantly point-and-click-able.
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    I had a friend in a robotics class that used lego mindstorms... one of his first projects was to build a lego robot to 'diffuse' a bomb. we all laughed at him because we always used to poke fun at him because he was from India and the general joke was that he was a terrorist
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    Quote Originally Posted by major_small
    I had a friend in a robotics class that used lego mindstorms... one of his first projects was to build a lego robot to 'diffuse' a bomb. we all laughed at him because we always used to poke fun at him because he was from India and the general joke was that he was a terrorist
    Haha...our final project was to create an attack 'bot that would find the target and thrash it in whatever manner the team decided. We shot metal marbles at it.
    If I did your homework for you, then you might pass your class without learning how to write a program like this. Then you might graduate and get your degree without learning how to write a program like this. You might become a professional programmer without knowing how to write a program like this. Someday you might work on a project with me without knowing how to write a program like this. Then I would have to do you serious bodily harm. - Jack Klein

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    Quote Originally Posted by stovellp
    Man I miss my lego collection. Every couple of months I go into a toy store and have a look at the latest stuff. It used to be $100 would get you the largest set and it would be made of 1000's of bricks. Nowadays you'll be lucky to get a single person on a horse for that, and he's made of just the one, maybe two, bricks.
    Are you Dutch?

    And yeah, the older lego sets still rock a damn lot.
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    They are out there! Galo's Avatar
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    I am Dutch,....
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    Banned nickname_changed's Avatar
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    Why would I be Dutch? Australian actually.

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    How typical. The blue ship that came out just afted mine (the soldiers ship) is on eBay for $500 (http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI....PageName=WD2V).

    I probably still have half my old pieces over at my folks house. I probably ate the other half over the years.

    I wish my brothers and sisters had got into lego and models when they were kids. All they do is play nintendo. I used to spend days with my lego in my imagination world. Ahh...

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    Let's do some coding! Welshy's Avatar
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    Kids these days, all PC's, PS2's, Gamecubes etc.....nobody goes out for excercise anymore, i remember the old days of spending afternoons playing with LEGO, or micromachines :P

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    Or matchbox cars or G.I. Joe's... man those were the days. I'm gonna go down to the hobby shops for a bit of a nostalgia trip tomorrow.

  15. #15
    Let's do some coding! Welshy's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by stovellp
    Or matchbox cars or G.I. Joe's...
    G.I Joes?? Action Man all the way!!

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