Lego programming

One way to look at electronic hardware is as big electron water wheels. Electrons come in on the hot (black) wire, flow through the machine doing some "work," and (hopefully) most leave on the neutral (white) wire, always flowing towards "Earth" or "ground." (Sure, there are a few planned escapees, like the ones that are being shot at your face right now if you sitting in front of a CRT.)

In an electronic circuit, the flow of the electrons is "logically" regulated with capacitors, diodes, resistors, etc., that have (hopefully) precise effects upon the flow of the electrons. Lego bricks could be used as analogs for these electronic components in design. For example, the red 4x1 brick would symbolize a 4-K resistor. The yellow 4x2 would symboliz an 8-Ohm Capacitor. With these bricks, one could construct a Lego "model" of a circuit. For example, the first two blocks you could place on your big Green Board would be the (symbolic) black and white DC power lines in and out of the model to establish the direction of flow. Then you connect those two bricks with an elaborate series of various Lego blocks, that have a specific effect on the flow.

In this fantasy world, the Green Board the Lego are being clicked onto has "sensors" to receive a "digital signature" signal from the blocks, so it can tell what blocks cover what parts of the board. The Green Board also has an RS-232 (USB, whatever) interface so the position of the different types of blocks (the circuit diagram) can be downloaded to an external system, which could then instruct a PCB-board-making device to turn your Lego model into a PCB.

Software can be viewed as similar type of abstract flow, but of streams of data (or just the "focus" of the program) instead of electrons. So bricks would just represent more abstract ideas. For example, "for" loops are a pair of white Lego bricks. Or bricks could represent more sophisticated standard or personal library functions or system calls.

Bricks could be stacked into the third dimension (Z), for combinations that would create more complex "functions," or perhaps to define what the parameters of that "for" loop are.

It seems like the whole design idea could probably be implemented virtually in software as a GUI. But somehow, the idea of sitting down with a big pile of Lego to do some coding seems much more appealing. Plus i'd get to give my wrists a break from typing.