I think I saw this thread coming these last few days.
I agree with a lot of what has been said before. I also think everything gets very easy when you can get a readymade kit. And it has a lot to do with the kind of attitude this board is dealing with.
I've been taking part in that thread SSLtech talks about, because I'm also quite concerned about this. I'm a sort of newbie too, but have been reading this board for maybe two years before making my first post. That's because I don't want to post another "resistance color code?" thread and clutter the internet with more stupidity. I was amazed at how people were lobbying for their own interest when someone just said "do it yourself" to the guy. Isn't it the aim of this board, diy? The fact that money is being made on the kindness and knowledge of this place's gurus annoys me, to say the least, and hearing some people complaining about "people not sharing enough" when all they want is a free consulting sounds crazy to me.
I am glad some legit businesses make some money here (they can say it's just a little summer fun job, it's still profit), and they make kits and whatnot available to clueless people like me or just lazy ones (like me too). They are legit companies, pay taxes, sometimes people work for them, great! I sometimes find it hard to believe that some people selling hundreds of units of their stuff on a very regular basis here are not doing it for profit or are legit businesses ( as I don't think legit businesses do things under the radar, and nonprofit ones can't be that big and time-consuming, IMO ). Non legit businesses make it hard for legit businesses to survive by being a disloyal challenger ( sorry, don't know "concurrence déloyale" in proper english). I don't really want to support that. Of course, some of those people have some really cool stuff, so no one says anything.
To sum up, I think this blooming of commercial offers has something to do with this attitude problem people seem to have sometimes.
In fact, the day I got my first 1176 boards from Mnats, I saw how easier it made the whole process, and I really appreciated it (I had been home etching and drilling 8 greenpres and 2 1176 before that, so I really felt the difference), but when you can get PCBs+case+components, there's not much more to learn if you haven't done a home etch before or drilled you own ugly case or made your own mistakes with digikey.
I would love to see more home etch or bread board layouts that don't end up mass produced. This I think is the key to learning more, keeping things nonprofit, thus legal.
I got quite carried away again, sorry
Was I off topic maybe?