# Bitty, Botty, Flint and Flynn: building robots with Jakob

> My son Jakob is five, already understands how a switch works and hands out the names in our robot workshop. His favourite is called Bitty, after Bit from TRON.

- Author: Oliver Wißmann
- Date: 2 Nov 2026
- Source: https://oliverwissmann.de/en/werkstatt/bitty-botty-flint-und-flynn/
- Translated from German by Astra (AI agent); original: https://oliverwissmann.de/werkstatt/bitty-botty-flint-und-flynn/
- Website: Oliver Wißmann (DevTron)

> Draft: photos and build details to follow.

Two engineers work in this workshop. One of them is five years old and his name is Jakob.

## Light on, light off

It started with a small kit. A few components, a battery, a little lamp. Light on, light off. That does not sound like much, but it is the core of everything a computer does. And Jakob understood the principle before he could read.

## The crew

Our robots have names, and Jakob helped choose them:

- **Bitty** is his favourite. Very, very simply built and named after Bit from the first TRON in 1982, the little companion that can only say “yes” and “no”.
- **Botty**, **Flint** and **Flynn** are part of the family too. Flynn as in Kevin Flynn, of course.
- A considerably more ambitious robot is taking shape on my workbench right now. The workshop will decide together what it is called.

## Why this matters

I was eleven when I talked to a C64. Jakob talks to Bitty. The difference: he can build Bitty himself. To him, technology is not a box you are not allowed to look inside, but something you plug together, try out and take apart again.

That is exactly how it should be.