As an extended toy universe Lego is great but as STEM skills and intuitions catalyst it is a cul de sac of arrested development. There is a weird way it directs your attention away from all the hard problems, which are partly encapsulated away, partly curated out entirely.

Blogger at ribbonfarm.com, running summerofprotocols.com, host of /gloom ☀️

I think there is some engineering intuition it helps build. After tinkering for hours and hours and days and days I built up an intuition something like 'I can build anything, I just have to figure out a series of smaller problems', as well as a joy in building without a goal which imo is essential for good engineering

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Nick's friend

Moshis in bio

Yes, in fact tinkering with Lego while on a break from college made me realize I should be in engineering vs the path I was on (economics/polisci) - the joy and meditative quality of building/solving was there.

I still build legos actually :) just finished the van gogh one. Never went deep into mindstorms etc though.

If you work at a real engineering job now as an adult, did the intuitions translate well?

And how deep did you go? What was the most complex lego build you did?