Review on LEGO MINDSTORMS 31313 Educational Programming by Kenneth Witte

Summary: Got it a few weeks ago. Great toy, there are some inconveniences, buy it (when you understand that it is expensive to buy, maintain and expand!) Pros: Great toy for learning assembly, transmission and programming concepts. Very good documentation available on the LEGO website, YouTube videos, some great books etc. Able to build a variety of vehicles and use sensors, remote controls etc to control them. Very, very funny. Annoying: Very small parts included; These parts are easily lost, so I think there should be more of them in the set. While you can buy replacement parts, they have to be bought in bulk (forcing you to buy parts you don't need) and are expensive (typically $15-$30). Also in this home set there are unique items that are not included in the study set and vice versa. So if you try to build a car from another kit, you will most likely come across parts that you don't have. You can usually find workarounds, but this is annoying. The sensors make the set really cool for work, but the education and home editions come with a different set of sensors, and buying additional sensors is expensive ($30-$40). The head unit is usually "built-in" in your car, so the car must be disassembled to change the batteries. 6 AA batteries don't last long, and a rechargeable LEGO battery pack (which allows you to charge the car without disassembling the car) costs around $100. What's really annoying: LEGO doesn't support its original programming language, so you can't download it if you have the latest operating system (at least on a Mac as of March 4, 2020). What you can download is scratch based software. This Scratch based software is as good as the original LEGO programming language and I really like it. HOWEVER, the interface is incomplete and does not work properly. You can't cut and paste code snippets between workspaces (this is very annoying as you can make a piece of logic work the way you want, but you can't reuse it, you have to recode it). You have no control over how and when your program is saved (it is always saved automatically). So if you accidentally delete the code, you cannot go back to a previously saved version of your program. The state of the code is NOW saved.