From "Getting Started With ARDUINO" by Missimo Banzi
The Arduino philosophy is based on making design rather then talking about it.
It is a constant search for faster and more accurate ways to build better prototypes. We have explored many prototyping techniques and developed ways of thinking with our hands.
The classic engineering relies on a strict process for getting from A to B while the Arduino way is based on maybe getting lost in the way and finding C instead.
This is the process of tinkering that we are so fond about; playing with the medium in an open-ended way, finding the unexpected. In this search we also selected a number of software packages that enable that process, this constant manipulation of the software and hardware medium.Another concept we developed is the “opportunistic prototyping”: why spend time and energy building from scratch, a process that requires time and profound technical knowledge, while we can take already made devices and hack them in order to exploit the hard work done by large companies and good engineers?
This become evident in Ivrea where the heritage of Olivetti is represented by a few junkyards where computer parts, electronic components and devices of any sort have been dumped after the demise of the Italian company. We could buy those devices for a few euros and hack them into our prototypes dramatically shortening the loop.
The last element is the community. Engaging people and push them to share by being the first to share. We’re standing on the shoulders of the giants of open source here.
In the next few paragraphs you can see some of our references that have inspired the “Arduino Way”.
/tinkering
We believe it is essential to play with the medium, exploring different possibilities directly on the hardware and software, sometimes without a very defined goal. We call this process Tinkering. An exhibition that took place at the Exploratorium in 2004 had the best definition of it:
Tinkering is what happens when you try something you don’t quite know how to do, guided by whim, imagination, and curiosity.
When you tinker, there are no instructions - but there are also no failures, no right or wrong ways of doing things. It’s about figuring out how things work and reworking them.
Contraptions, machines, wildly mismatched objects working in harmony - This is the stuff of tinkering.
Re-using existing technology is one of the best ways of tinkering. Getting cheap toys or old discarded equipment and hacking them to make them do something new is one of the best ways to get to great results.
