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Comment by sossles | Hacker News Reader

As a kid I always wanted the 8860 set: http://www.technicopedia.com/8860.html. It was well beyond the means of my family at time, and I had almost forgotten it existed until I discovered my wife's family had it in their Lego stash and thus I had a chance to live out my childhood again.

Building the 8860 made me realise how much Lego instructions have improved, as every step is basically a game of spot-the-difference trying to work out what pieces have been added. Not so bad for a small build, but in these complex builds it's a long process, especially when all the parts have been mixed into a larger collection of bits.

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I prefer the older type of instructions. They make you think - you need to plan out more of the build yourself, instead of just becoming a mindless brick assembly robot.

The 8860 instructions: https://bricks.argz.com/ins/8860-1

I wonder if there is literature about improvement in Lego instructions. Current instructions still don't highlight specific changes, although they do list out the parts to be used. As I've watched my kids grow to work it out for themselves it is interesting to see how much tacit Lego knowledge is needed to complete a particular step.

Some of them actually do highlight specific changes, but Lego Group isn't consistent about it, even in sets of similar scale released around the same time.

For example, the instructions in the Lego UCS A-Wing from 2020 don't highlight changes; the Space Shuttle Discovery (released 2021) instructions do (with a red outline around the pieces added). The Shuttle set's a bit bigger, but the two sets are fairly similar in terms of scale and build complexity; it seems that it's really up to the designer to decide how explicit the instructions are (whether or not things are highlighted, how many things happen in each step, when specific parts are called out with arrows, etc.).

Tangentially, I own a LEGO fanmade book with a detailed guide on how to create instructions for your own creations. I don't have it on hand, but I recall POV-Ray was involved.

It's sad that they don't keep these sets going. Somehow my parents bought me a Technik set when I was a kid. I say somehow, because it's expensive to me now, and I grew up in the economic climate of the 90s in the USSR. I am almost 100% sure this set is the reason I am comfortable working on technical stuff ranging from code to mechanics to building computers, etc. The set in the OP actually teaches you how a transmission works - that's something few adults understand from tutorials, but its hard not to understand it when you build it.

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