<story><title>Fritzing is an open-source electronic design tool</title><url>https://fritzing.org/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>Brian_K_White</author><text>I do not recommend this. Use Kicad.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s not an on-ramp, it&amp;#x27;s a time-wasting distraction detour from your actual on-ramp.&lt;p&gt;Every minute you spend figuring out how to do something in fritzing is a minute you could have spent figuring out the same thing in kicad, which you will end up doing eventually &lt;i&gt;anyway&lt;/i&gt;, I promise you, garanteed. All this gets you is some badly designed boards and wasted time.&lt;p&gt;There are gobs of youtube videos for the absolute beginner which takes care of taking you from zero to simple pcb in a few minutes. Then you figure out a lot of other details as you encounter needs for them over time.&lt;p&gt;It doesn&amp;#x27;t have to be kicad either. If you don&amp;#x27;t mind a commercial proprietary product, Eagle is fine too. It&amp;#x27;s workflow is a little different but not bad. In fact it&amp;#x27;s an industry standard at a low level.</text></comment>
<story><title>Fritzing is an open-source electronic design tool</title><url>https://fritzing.org/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>halotrope</author><text>If fritzing gets #1 spot on HN I would like to wholeheartedly recommend &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.kicad.org&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.kicad.org&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt; as well.
IMHO much saner workflow and good UX in the latest version.I did a simple PCB and got it manufactured on &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;jlcpcb.com&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;jlcpcb.com&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt; 
for a couple bucks. Quite a rewarding experience.&lt;p&gt;I would also suggest that anyone who cares about computers gets to know basic electronics. How do transistors work, what is a bus (e.g I2C or SPI) and how is it all connected? (Drumroll ... a PCB of course). There is a ton of tutorials on youtube that do it end to end. E.g Phils Lab &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=rLDqQ2L_mUQ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=rLDqQ2L_mUQ&lt;/a&gt; for a PCB design. Or Ben Eaters excellent beginner tutorial &amp;quot;Hello World from Scratch&amp;quot; &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=LnzuMJLZRdU&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=LnzuMJLZRdU&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>