> Fun fact #1: you rent your cap and gown in the US. You have to return them. And they’re expensive, too! I paid $94 just for the privilege of renting mine, which is insane because they probably cost way less than that to manufacture.

Ah, yes, of course this is how it works in the US.

FWIW I'm in the US and I bought mine. Renting does seem to make more sense here as the gown has no utility outside of this one event.

I'm surprised at the concept, somehow I thought the whole "graduation cap" thing was just in movies. Seems out of place in a country that's otherwise so individualistic.

I was wondering why I saw them for cheap on aliexpress…

As opposed to what buying the thing and storing it or throwing it away?

It's a $10 gown, renting it for $100 is madness

Throwing it away after single use is madness.

I think they’re saying it should be much cheaper to rent, and we shouldn’t throw them away.

You generally rent caps and gowns in the UK too. Can you share where you are that you buy them?

Do you truly believe most of that goes towards wages?

Well, some will go on corporation tax, some on business rates, some on rent of the land the storage is on (which itself has to pay corporation tax, I suppose).

Given that you’re forced to rent the cap and gown, I think it’s safe to say that competitive forces are entirely absent in this scenario.

What competitive forces? It's not like people have a choice in choosing whether they want a particular cap or gown and the people who contract the rental agreement (i.e. the university admin) are not the ones bearing the cost.

> It probably would’ve been easier if I didn’t use Rust and just used the Arduino libraries, or if I used a different board. But I was really married to this blog post title idea

Worth it, nicely done

> Fun fact #1: you rent your cap and gown in the US. You have to return them. And they’re expensive, too! I paid $94 just for the privilege of renting mine

Ah, the final way that US universities transfer wealth from students to corporations... just before they start sending out begging letters for alumni donations to the poor, destitute university*

*: my university shuttered the CS graduate program the year I graduated, on the basis that "there are more jobs in communications", so I never donated a red cent

Side note:

> What if, say, you say you’re fine without a cap and gown? Well, then you can’t walk in the ceremony. So you do need to shell out to rent them.

No, you don’t need to shell out. You get you diploma regardless of whether you participate in the ceremony or not.

I chose not to participate because I knew it would be long and boring, and I still got my diploma all the same.

If you go to a bigger school, they have multiple graduation ceremonies. Split the rental amongst anyone who does not share a time slot with you.

That’s what I did and people acted like this was a genius move. No, I am just broke.

You can just not participate in the ceremony and then you don’t have to spend any extra money at all.

I skipped the graduation ceremonies for my BA and my first master’s degree. For my second, apparently the cost of a cap, gown and hood was included in the tuition so I have academic regalia sitting in a box somewhere should I ever find myself in need of such, a scenario I cannot imagine ever coming to pass.

Yeah, I skipped mine too. I was not (and am not) at all proud of my box-checking degrees.

I had a blast in undergrad, not at all because of the classes.

Same here, walking across the stage in a dress is for the school, not for you. Got my paper, bye

I just did online school and didn't bother showing up to any kind of ceremony. I was 30 when I finally finished school, I didn't really feel the need to prove anything.

Genuinely the best use of "I was really married to this blog post title idea" as a justification for a technical decision I've ever read. Congrats!

I am pretty sure I purchased my cap and gown instead of renting. But my college was a bit smaller.

At my school, I purchased my cap but rented the gown. The cap is in a box never to be looked at again. I can't imagine what I would do with the gown.

It’s not just for graduations! You can wear it at any gown-appropriate event!

Marriages, graduations and funerals carry forward some traditions that haven’t made sense for generations. They are the irregular verbs of modern life. Interestingly, marriages and funerals often have a religious element, and religion itself is conservative—but graduation doesn’t have that excuse.

Can you? I mean, you _can_ but you really can't. Showing up at a marriage or funeral in one would be... weird to say the least.

Wouldn't the purchase option be priced at a multiple to the rental?

OP paid $94 to rent their gown. I'm pretty sure I paid less than that (if not a comparable price) to buy mine. Thank god it wasn't multiple more, I only wore it for 5 minutes for a picture, since I graduated during Covid.

Yeah, there was no option to rent at my school. I purchased those things, not that I'll ever use them again.

Can't you sell it used to the next graduating class?

Technically it runs AVR-RISC :-)

Fun project though!

Those ATtiny85 boards that plug directly into a USB port are great if you need 1 to 5 GPIOs and/or a HID interface. At 2 dollars apiece or so it's worth having a few around.

> So you do need to shell out to rent them. And they don’t give you the option to buy the cap and gown outright.

You can't buy them from a 3rd party? Maybe a cheap Spirit Halloween costume? Maybe even make your own from cardboard and a black napkin or two?

Then you probably won't match the rest of the class.

You are having so much fun in the video clips. I love this!

Living in the PE side of software, with its EBITDA and other metrics, poorly researched product initiatives, senseless firefighting, and toxic bro cultures, it's nice to be reminded some of the reasons I got into this. Thank you.

> I thought about it but decided it looks pretty tacky. It looks like what kids would think of as a gaming PC and what boomers would think of as a seizure.

Missed chance to be a school legend and initiation of a career launching arc.

I think if designed in a way where it’s subtle when off/low and at appropriate times can be activated on-demand, that would be great.

But to be in a crowd of people all dressed the same, all graduating as well, having a gaming PC on your head might be too much main character energy.

I don't recall that there is a situation that you can turn on gaming RGB on your head. Someone suddenly starting to shine is as bad as keep shining. It's just either stealing everyone's concentration near you or give a jump scare to how ever was unlucky to look at your direction when you turned it on.

Say you’re at the reception after and you want to take a few photos with friends and family.

Or the traditional post-commencement board mortaring where you light up and throw it into the air.

Actually that gives me an idea: a grad cap that is also a drone. So when you throw it up with everyone in celebration yours just keeps going.

Goodbye hat. I uploaded my student debt into you. Don’t come back.

> Are you actually going to wear this to your graduation? > Heck no.

What? That would have been so much fun!

Cool project. And it goes to show how this education system is scammed out to the max, even cap and gown.

Oh to be young and have oodles of free time again

Or to automatically write command bitching about it.

That would likely entail an LLM today. Which is the single topic that is more highly represented on the HN homepage than Rust.

You forgot the lowkey accusation that a comment is llm-generated. With that we have the trifecta.

That seems unnecessary. JavaScript is memory safe.

Do you go on every project that announces itself to be written in C/C++/Zig/Fil-C/Java/etc. and make those same complaints? That must be tiring.

No need!

I bet you are fun at parties

As much as anyone else talking about Rust or programming at. a. party.

You’d be surprised

There is a joke around ownership or borrowing that I'm going to take the high road and not make.