Polite Dissent

A fascinating article about an idea that was before its time: Lego Mindstorms: What Went Wrong?

For those of you unfamiliar with Mindstorms, it was a series of kits released by Lego in 1988 1998 that allowed users to build robots out of Legos and program them with their computers. It was a brilliant concept, but one that went nowhere fast. Lego stopped supporting the line (except for the starter kit), and despite an avid online community, it’s hard to find parts or information now.

I thought Mindstorms was a clever idea, and saved up to purchase one. I couldn’t find any sets in the local stores, so I had to get it from the online Lego site. I bought the starter set plus two expansions back in ‘01 and, to be honest, they’ve been gathering dust on my shelf since then.

Why did such a clever product go wrong? The article lists some key reasons, here’s a few of my own:

• Co$t. Those kits were expensive.
• Scarcity. The kits were hard to find, even on eBay where they cost an arm and a leg (and a second leg for shipping).
• No useful project ideas came with the kits. There were some silly project instructions, but nothing remotely useful. When you build a robot you want it to do something neat, not just go around in a circle. The online community has built some incredible robots from Legos (like one that solves Rubik’s Cubes), but I’m nowhere near that smart. I want something I can build that does something at least a little useful, but doesn’t take an engineering degree to build.
• Sloppy programming. The Mindstorm software automatically installed in an upper level directory (an easy to fix annoyance, but why shouldn’t they default to the Program Files directory, like every other program on the planet). The directory name was all caps too (/LEGO_MINDSTORMS). Plus, it automatically started every time I booted Windows. Yes, these are all easy to fix default settings, but I shouldn’t have to fix them. Any competent programmer knows better.

I think it was those last two that are the main reason the kits are sitting undisturbed on my shelf. I want to build something neat, not useless, and I don’t want to have to wade through sloppy programming to do it.

One of these days I’d love to dig out Mindstorms and build something to be proud of. If I could just find the time (maybe after I finish my latest project: a shelving unit designed to hold 50 long boxes* — now that’s something useful!)

*No, I don’t have quite that many (yet). I’m planning for the future.