Arduino Programming Is Called Sketch Programming

Writing an ardunio software requires a little bit background in programming. If you already have it than it is going to be like piece of cake for you and if you don’t have it, don’t worry it is really not a rocket science. As we are not going to write 1m lines of code to launch a rocket and bring in back. Most of the programs that we will write are usually small and not so hard to develop understand and re-use for other projects now, writing few lines of code and seeing something working in the physical world is really the fun part. So in this section we will review the basic building blocks and syntax being used in arduino programming language.

Arduino Programming Is Called Sketch Programming

We already learned that the arduino program is called “sketch”, but why it is called that way ? Well programming is usually a thinking and creative process where we try to solve a specific problem. Now, when we have some solution to that problem or we have a new idea in our head. It is important to write it down or sketch it as soon as possible

As it is important to catch that moment of inspiration. I can tell that in my own work all kind of ideas are jumping to my mind and i always write them as soon as possible. It can be on a piece of paper, in my mobile device or my desktop computer. Now back to the arduino, when sketching in code it’s okay to let your creative mind take control and put less emphasis on creating the perfect code

It is ok to make mistakes and learning what is working or not working. The idea is to keep improving your code, keep trying new things and learn from other. Another important aspect about learning to code, is to build a step-by-step framework around your project specifically when we combine software and hardware. The meaning of such framework is to break any project to little pieces same as we break big problem or a challenge to little problems handling each one at a time.

For example, let’s say that our project is going to combine 3 different sensors. It makes much more sense to build and test our code for each sensor at a time. Don’t try to build and sketch everything end-to- end, try to work in incremental steps, “baby steps”. If something is not working as we expected, we can just undo or fix the last incremental step and at the end, it will be much more faster process to create a new project.