It’s a shame that Arduino has effectively truncated kids learning with a full MCU as the “building block” of their learning
I see it also bite them in the arse with wasteful solutions. Often a BJT or power fet is all they need (say for a basic relay trigger). But if they aren’t presented with a shiny arduino compatible module explicitly designed for what they want, they get nervous
About half the kids I see make the intellectual jump, half end up not coming back
I do wish kids were taught basic soldering, it would make the learning process a lot less worrisome
The 555 and LM741 are still supreme learning tools. They are even simple enough to breadboard out with BJTs and analogue components. I’ve only seen a few extremely hardcore guys bother to conceptualise under the hood that deeply