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Comment by kdamken | Hacker News Reader

Holy moly that website does a bad job of describing what they actually do. Apparently you can program the lights and vibrations? I looked up a YouTube video, apparently they can be programmed for notifications from your phone?

Marketing team really dropped the ball on this one.

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I disagree.

"When Nyla got Jewelbots for her birthday she gave the second one to Wenhao, a girl in her class."

"Nyla and Wenhao's Jewelbots light up blue when they are together (Blue is Wenhao's favorite color)"

"They make a secret language just for their Jewelbots. Sending one buzz means "look behind you!"."

"Using the power of STEM, Nyla and her friends make games and custom friend animations by writing code and uploading it to their Jewelbots!"

That pretty unambigiously describes a piece of programmable jewellery to me. It's doing it in a more story-driven way than presenting a bulleted list of specs, but given the target audience that makes sense. Having read that page I'm really not even slightly confused about what it is.

"Step 2 To begin coding your Jewelbot, you will need to download the Arduino IDE."

"Step 1: In a terminal, input the command vimtutor..."

Yeah good luck with that. Most people struggle (not just little girls) already struggle to install software where you literally have to click "continue" 3 times...

I thought it was pretty well done considering the target audience.

Brief tagline "Friendship bracelet. That you can code" to pique your interest.

Then a user story showing how someone actually used it.

I'm sure it can be improved significantly, but I feel the idea behind pitching why you would want to buy it (it's a friendship bracelet that does cool things like light up the same color when you're together) as opposed to its capabilities is not necessarily that far off the mark for a product of this nature (e.g. the Apple Watch landing page as of right now doesn't describe anything about what the Watch can do...it's just selling the fact that it's a watch).

Thanks so much for your feedback! Sounds like we have some things to add to the FAQ!

Jewelbots can be programmed just like an Arduino using C++. Real code! Because we believe that kids are super smart (Also, I starting writing C++ at 11).

My knee jerk reaction was pretty negative, but on only a few seconds’ reflection I think this is great. Absolutely no reason why kids can’t start with C++; it doesn’t have to be template meta programming insanity from the get-go. Motivated kids have infinite capacity for learning and a lot of time for exploration.

Kudos for not patronizing them with some awful imitation of flow programming or some neutered scripting language.

Yeah, right? I don't think the drag -> drop coding does a lot of help when it comes to learning.

Talking to my male peers, I learned that most of them started coding when they were Tweens, largely because they wanted to make games or found an open source project they loved. Jewelbots are designed to be the same for girls. So far so good!

Yup. There's a lot of stuff that tries to teach that 'programmer mindset'; flow programming is one end of it. My eldest daughter is 5 and is at the other end: the 'Robot Turtles' board game. She likes it. I really don't know that it will make the slightest difference in her future programming ability, which will range anywhere from epsilon to a lot (and will have nothing to do with me beyond me providing food, a roof, and moral support.)

Were she older, I would absolutely be making sure these got on her radar so I could gauge her interest. Nothing so crass as _showing her_ of course.

I love the risk you're taking here: not only a hardware startup, but also one where success is predicated on passing the cool filter of tween girls. There is something delightfully subversive in marketing C++ programmable jewelry to young girls; it's like a 'fuck you' to Lego Friends. I really want this to succeed. Good luck.

I think the real C++ part is so important because it respects the abilities and intelligence of children to participate in the adult world using a real (yet approachable) technology that is also used in industry. This also makes these skills earned poking around with a fun toy transferable to solving their own problems, doing coursework at university, and later on entering the technology labor market. Other programming toys aimed at kids like NXT graphical programming or scratch don't have the same transferability and I've noticed that kids see right through that.

I don't think that you need to worry about the transferability of skills from a 11-year-olds toy to professional software development. The far more important thing to transfer is interest/excitement, and that may (or may not -- you're the expert) be easiest to do with a language other than C++. Part of what makes Arduino so fun is how fast you can get to a blinky LED, and part of what makes Scratch so fun is how quickly you can get to interactive graphics. I feel like there has to be something (not necessarily existing today) which is powerful enough to make kids feel like they are in control of the device without annoying arcana like semicolon errors.

These things build on each other over time and learning a language is not exactly easy, especially if you are starting out. An important aspect of the transferability here is that you can go from programming a jewelbot in c++ to programming other microcontrollers. You don't have to learn a completely different language and toolchain to continue exploring programming on a different platform.

Some kids can see through anything, but I think it’s hugely naive to think many kids won’t struggle with it. Do you remember how hard kids find algebra? That syntax is downright trivial compared to explaining why you need to insert a space between angle brackets when composing templates, or why calling your method overloaded for pointers might sometimes call an integer one instead when passed a null literal, or how to debug e.g. memory alignment errors, which are often presented with cryptic segmentation faults.

I think it’s great for a certain crowd, but this could be quite frustrating for many pre teens and ultimately put them off of casual coding.

Besides, kids aren’t exactly leaping at micro controllers. And why should they? Software programming is applicable to more and more prospective jobs every year.

> Some kids can see through anything, but I think it’s hugely naive to think many kids won’t struggle with it. Do you remember how hard kids find algebra? That syntax is downright trivial compared to explaining why you need to insert a space between angle brackets when composing templates, or why calling your method overloaded for pointers might sometimes call an integer one instead when passed a null literal, or how to debug e.g. memory alignment errors, which are often presented with cryptic segmentation faults.

> I think it’s great for a certain crowd, but this could be quite frustrating for many pre teens and ultimately put them off of casual coding.

> Besides, kids aren’t exactly leaping at micro controllers. And why should they? Software programming is applicable to more and more prospective jobs every year.

>why you need to insert a space between angle brackets when composing templates,

You don't have to anymore ;)

And I started at 12, so I feel you are a kindred spirit and want you to win so much.

But is C++ really the first/best/only programming experience? Why would what be the right choice? UX absolutely just as important for developers as is is for ordinary users.

I imagine the user experience unfolding for my 11 year old daughter, ideally there is as little friction as possible from brcelet in hand to making code run. We want to minimize frustrations in order to maximize time spent doing and creating.

I’m not afraid 11 year olds will lack the ability to use C++, I’m afraid of it not being the way that’s most fun and engaging. And I certainly don’t mean dumbed down. Engineers at any age get more enjoyment from having the best tool for the job.

The language choice I imagine was driven by their choice of Arduino.

Arduino got where they are in part by having a rather nice IDE for a microcontroller, a nice simplified version of C++ (the Arduino language, which I assume can be used here) that eliminates a lot of the complexity and made it very simple to get started, and a nice easy pattern to upload / compile / test.

Personally, I'm not aware of a better choice out there in the microcontroller world. And it looks like the setup makes it easy (2 lines of code) to turn on / off LEDs or buzzers.

What's nice about using Arduino as well, is that the ecosystem of Arduino is very large. So it's not that much of a step up from here to other hardware projects. It's also not a huge leap from Arduino C to the many other C and C-like languages out there as well.

That’s great to know thank you. Having a great tooling/environment/ecosystem is probably more important than the language choice itself.

While I tend to agree with you—I started with C++ around that time as well—I do wish they included some type of safer language to play with as some c++ errors/warnings took me days to work around and may have put me off entirely had I a strong social life at the time :) I seem to remember logo working well for mindstorms when I was also that age. Why not support something a tiny bit friendlier than possibly the most complex language in active professional use?

No problem, happy to help. I think adding a FAQ at the top that's like, "What can a Jewelbot be programmed to do?" with a longer list of possible use cases would help. The front page kind of lists them but I found it to be a bit unclear, and that's from a technical perspective. A non techie parent might be even more confused, so I find it's helpful to ELI5.

I agree it could do better explaining what Jewelbots are, but I wouldn't assume there's a dedicated "marketing team" for this product yet.

Hi! We're a 5 person team located in NYC. I'm the marketing team (plus my cofounder Brooke). This is all super helpful feedback, thank you!

What they will do is make the nearly inevitable drama of teen girl lives more expensive as the devices are discarded as rapidly as BFFs and boyfriends.

The drama in a young teen's life seems to know no limits. It's all very important to them, at least for the moment. As a parent, you're sort of obligated to take it Very Seriously.

These are just one more thing to be taken Very Seriously.

I do find it amusing that marketing has decided to latch onto STEM for young ladies. It's a noble goal, but I'm not sure trinkets are the way to go about it.

Sort of related: I'm a bit proud that my daughter is an MD, but my only help, aside from paying for it, was just offering to support her, regardless of her career choices - and trying to keep a good sense of humor.

Hi! I hope we don't get discarded! We're a new product, so we don't yet have too much data about retention. We do know that 44% of our users code their Jewelbots using C++, many as first time coders! We also are about to ship our 10,000th unit. That makes over 4,000 new coders in the world (many younger than 10 years old)!

I'd hope so too, but such seemed the way of my daughter and her friends when they were in that age bracket. Friendships were tossed aside at the slightest of reasons. It was a lot of drama.

While probably sexist to note this, my son and his friends didn't seem to have nearly the same drama. I'm not sure what the difference is but it certainly was both real and notable. I'm also sure it isn't universal.

Maybe a fallback, not that you need one yet, when/if discarding is an issue, make a ring that has less functionality but isn't as obtrusive. The cool kids keep their Jewelbots in their bag but a ring lets them know of some activity.

Starting lots of drama, and taking apparently silly things Very Seriously, is hardly unique to teenagers. At least petty teenage drama doesn't bankrupt whole companies, as I've seen happen multiple times with petty adult drama.

Some people do not mature very much, true.

"the nearly inevitable drama of teen girl lives more expensive as the devices are discarded as rapidly as BFFs and boyfriends."

This is an untrue stereotype. I would argue that this stereotype, teen girls are unnecessarily and overly dramatic, is one of the same stereotypes that dissuades girls from coding in the first place.

I'm not sure what you mean. Girls and guys in their young teen years (and older teen years) are both likely to fall in/out with other people. Both are very dramatic. While it could be confirmation bias, girls are more likely to "ignore each other", and other things that more permanently changes relationships.

If this is two bands that are interconnected that could get expensive.

You can argue that but, out of curiosity, I just sent my daughter a text.

Me: 'How long do you think you kept friendship bracelets for?'

Her reply: 'Maybe two weeks. I still have one from [redacted] somewhere.'

As I said, it surely isn't universal but she and her friends all fit that pattern. It didn't keep her from STEM, she's an MD.

> It didn't keep her from STEM, she's an MD.

That's not out of the norm; roughly half of medical students are women: https://www.aamc.org/data/facts/

The "shortage of women in STEM" mostly refers to engineering and computer science.

I'd call medical a science, but that's just me.

That's what I'm saying. It's only some of the sciences that have a shortage of women, and medical isn't really one of them. In fact one branch (nursing) has a huge oversupply of women.

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