Simple victories are so nice

I am sitting here in my seat, cackling, because I started with a breadboard and assorted components, followed the instructions, and now I have an LED that lights up when you push a button.

It didn't break! It worked! I got the polarity correct all around! And, let me repeat, it didn't break!

I am so stoked you all have no idea~


Simple circuit with a battery, resistor, push button, LED:

Simple circuit with the button pushed. LED is lit up!

ETA: ahhahah and I just reread the instructions, and realized that they actually gave which color resistor to use. I tried to calculate it on my own, and ended up using a 10k resistor rather than a 1k resistor. Ooops. Still lit up, like the photo shows, but (not shown) after changing resistors, the light is brighter.

Recovering from mistakes is also very nice

I did another simple project, this time I didn't follow the diagram perfectly. I thought I knew enough about the underlying connections of the breadboard that I could just wing it. Turns out I was wrong. But I eventually figured out what I'd gotten wrong and fixed it. That makes me incredibly happy.

Something I've been thinking about lately: I feel smarter when I make mistakes and fix them myself than when I just get things right the first time. It would be frustrating if everything was a mistake, but that rush that comes from figuring out what the problem is? Delicious~

It's irrational, I know, but when I already know how to do something correctly it... just feels easy. Obvious. Everyone knows it duh. Start from a blank slate, anyone can get it working perfectly if they just follow the directions exactly. But once there's a mistake on the table, ahh first there's identifying the mistake. Second there's fixing it. Chances are, no one's breaking it in exactly the same way. Recovering from that mistake: that feels like something of my own, whereas the original instructions might not.

ETA: Just remembered something: This all assumes that I have some sort of space where it's fine to make mistakes, though! Either somewhere private, or somewhere nonjudgemental to newbies making mistakes ;) Which is why I'm doing this in my room, not trying to find out if there are electronics related hobby groups in the area.