GSoC 2020 - Examples for Libraries

[AsherThomasBabu]

I am Asher Thomas Babu, a 2nd-year Electronics and Communication Engineering Undergraduate student at the College of Engineering Chengannur, Kerala, India. It gives me great joy to see that my Favourite Development Board is part of the Google Summer of Code 2020. I have been working with the Arduino on various projects based on it for nearly 4 years now and have acquired a great taste in curating programs and documenting hardware projects.

Background
My first steps into the world of electronics and programming were through the Arduino and it wasn't an easy neither interesting one, basically because of the fact that I didn't have any basics in programming. But the taste of success after a lot of hard work scouring the internet on basic and easy to understand programming tutorials was very sweet.

A bright blinking LED would be a lot more relatable and interesting to a first-timer rather than a sequence of numbers printed on a screen. From personal experience, I would have learned to program a lot quicker if I had a more tangible experience along with a structured readable guide. I understand that there are various tutorials available as of now, but what I have understood is that all of these are focused around teaching how to use the Arduino rather than teaching how to program.

My Idea Proposal
Major boards like the Raspberry Pi are headed towards making the process of learning easier and more accessible for young budding programmers. With the widespread popularity and cheap availability of the powerful Arduino development boards and various I/O modules, I propose that the Arduino coupled with a well-planned curriculum can become the best platform to teach programming in a wonderfully interactive and interesting way. Libraries and examples can be created in order to make simpler functions along with specifically designed modular kits that can interface I/O devices to make programming fun and interesting.

Curating a well-structured guidebook and also even a chat-bot in addition to the above-mentioned libraries and examples for the purpose of teaching programming seems like a very interesting and necessary idea to me.

I would like to receive feedback and mentorship on the viability of this idea and also possible changes. Looking forward to working with you soon.

[AsherThomasBabu]

Referenced below are some of the many pull requests I plan on making to the Library Examples

1. Create ButtonMouseControl.ino arduino-libraries/Mouse#13 (comment)
2. Create JoystickMouseControl.ino arduino-libraries/Mouse#12 (comment)
3. Create LiquidcCrystal_I2C.ino arduino-libraries/LiquidCrystal#29 (comment)

[AsherThomasBabu]

Hey, @alranel I'd appreciate it if you could give me some guidance on this.
Thanks

[alranel]

Welcome @AsherThomasBabu, and thank you for your introduction and your contributions. Your idea is ambitious, but probably is more suited for the Season of Docs istead of the Summer of Code, which is more focused on programming. I'd suggest to focus more on writing code, so you may want to think about some advanced example that involves libraries and maybe a physical prototype.

[AsherThomasBabu]

Thank you sir, @alranel for the reply, I have in fact curated a proposal and submitted it at the GSoC Dashboard for review. I Have included plans for various examples that could be created. @per1234 @masci please do look at the proposal and leave feedback, It'll help me shape the proposal better.
Thank You
Asher

[AsherThomasBabu]

@per1234
Sir, I'm not sure if you noticed my previous message, being a reviewer for @arduino-libraries I think you'd know best about the needs of the current libraries. I have linked my proposal in .md HERE. Kindly review it and guide me on how I could make it better.
Thanking you in advance
Asher

[AsherThomasBabu]

@per1234 is writing examples to the core library at https://github.com/arduino/Arduino/tree/master/build/shared/examples open as a part of GSoC?

[AsherThomasBabu]

I have submitted my proposal! Looking forwards to working with the mentors at @arduino this summer.

[AsherThomasBabu]

Thank you @alranel and @per1234 for the support throughout! I have learned quite a lot. Hoping to remain associated with the community!