I genuinely can't wait for the kids in my family to be old enough to expose them to this ( I will admit that it will be a great excuse for me to play with it as well ).
I got really tired of the block based programming after a few weeks. My first "text" programming language was NQC ("not quite C") for the RCX, which was a C-like language that ran on top of the standard lego firmware. My first experience with proper C was legOS/brickOS, a toolchain to write software for the RCX with GCC. My first experience with Java was leJOS, which managed to fit a functional Java VM into the 32 KiB of RAM of the RCX. My first experience with Linux was because both of these tools functioned better there (except leJOS for NXT, bluetooth downloads always caused me trouble).
My dad kind of regretted it when his 10 year old built the disk launcher from the ultimate builder's set and hooked it up to the mindstorms vision command set to make a disk launcher that fired at anyone entering the basement...
So, Mindstorms introduced me to programming, then Linux, C, and Java.
I was always vaguely aware that you could "go deeper" with the RCX, with real programming languages and so on, but I never did so myself. I don't think the Lego company put much effort into introducing kids to these advanced features at the time - you had to know about it and have access to a community that could teach you things, and at that age I had no computer and we had dial-up internet anyway. So I stuck with the basic stuff.
I think that's actually an indication of the direction Lego is taking with this, unfortunately. It looks like the set is designed around 5 different robot designs you can build, rather than being open ended. I think this makes advertising easy, because a kid who sees the ad can say "I want to play with that robot", whereas an entirely open-ended set has less appeal. But not being forced to be creative turns these sets into novelties which kids will put aside after they've built each of the robots once. They've made the programmable blocks more "friendly" too since the RIS 2.0. (Hopefully the default programming environment is just as powerful, though.)
My best Minestorms story is the time I built a mini arcade set of games to grift nickels and pennies from my younger siblings.
Nope. He wants to play fortnite and football and nothing else matters - can't get him interested in it - thought I had him with a remote control plane but nope.
The worst part is he is very bright but very lazy - he kills his homework and then has no intellectual curiosity at all and I've tried lots of things to see if he likes any of them.
Now I just play fortnite with him and let him do his own thing til he shows an interest in anything.
LEGO is awesome. My kids liked building big LEGO stuff, love Minecraft, etc. But we never had success with Mindstorms at home.
Now I'm becoming an educator and I run some robotics teams built around LEGO -- FIRST LEGO League, etc. With -structure- and -team identity- and -competition-, Mindstorms, WeDo, etc, are terrifically interesting. Enrollment maxes every year and the level of engagement from the kids in the program is very high. I hear stories from parents about kids evangelizing robotics to the cashier at the grocery market during checkout. :P
Mindstorms suffers from being too open ended and too hard: you have to have a very high level of motivation to follow a project through to where you have something to be proud of. Without outside guidance and clear reasons to chase a goal for a long time (like doing well in competition), it all falls apart.
edit: One thing I like about the FIRST stuff is that it's a bit of a trojan horse. It teaches some kids who are not very much into STEM to begin with a lot of STEM; but it also teaches a lot of kids who are deeply into STEM better collaboration and project management skills, how to speak well, and how to master subjective evaluations. Your best STEM kids tend to only learn a little about engineering and math from it, but they learn plenty of other things.
Honestly that’s what every project I try feels like :-(
There's unlimited things we -could- be doing, but only a limited number are worth it, so this is rational.
Also an infinite number of parts. Lego is cool, but the pieces are expensive :-(
I just want to give em the exposure. What they do with it is up to them. My dad tried to show me basic shop skills. It wasn't meant to be. I almost wish he forced me now. It would have come in handy.
Anyway, with my son I've found that when I include him and let him help with things I do around the house, like carpentering, he's much more interested than if I try something more "artificial" for lack of a better word. It's as he wants to do "real" things, because nothing beats a computer game when it comes to not being real.
Consider every stereotypical intellectual TED talk you've seen, chances are it either goes deep on one idea or develops its uniqueness by combining ideas that create a new adjacency.
Granted the "jack of all trades, master of none" phenomenon is real but it's still predicated on mastery of singular topics being the target. Breadth combined with sufficient depth to be dangerous, as well as the ability to communicate clearly, enables people to organize and align disparate ideas that people can rally behind. Every skilled product manager, marketer, and executive needs to be able to cross over from their core expertise, and general curiosity and the ability to dive into many things at once is fundamental to those sorts of successes.
Lots of games that are scriptable too. Garrys Mod being one. Minecraft being well known for the insane mods people make.
Maybe even game creation too. All of the above were it for me though.
The instructions are clear and interactive on the app itself, at least when building "Vernie" the robot it becomes functional quite quickly. Actually asking the builder to make it some arms and legs after the torso and head are done :)
I didn't expose my kid to lego technics for the sake and benefit of STEM/robotics, but simply that I was so sick of playing with toddler toys day in and day out that I decided to buy something I would enjoy. I guess preempting fortnight is another benefit of starting early.
He is 4 years now, stacking (lego classic) is simpler, I enjoy it too. But most complex models he built with Fischertechnik (free exploration). Universal 3 [1] is amazing set (with 40 models book) and connections are much sturdier, blocks bigger, more ways to connect.
Building Lego Technic vehicle requires thinking ahead. Looks like the way forward is extending classic with studded beams (phased out in modern sets) or (from Technic side) building with Beam Frames (64179) [2].
[1] https://www.fischertechnik.de/en/products/playing/advanced/5...
[2] https://rebrickable.com/parts/64179/technic-beam-5-x-7-open-...