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Supergrunch

Raspberry Pi

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If you haven't heard of it, this is a miniaturised computer about the size of a credit card that's been designed with the express purpose of teaching kids to code for an (extremely!) minimal price - around £25 depending on where you get it. It's set up to boot Debian from an sd card, and has the following specs (which are in more detail on Wikipedia):

 

Broadcom BCM2835 system on a chip

CPU: 700 MHz ARM1176JZF-S core (ARM11 family)

GPU: Broadcom VideoCore IV, OpenGL ES 2.0, 1080p30 h.264/MPEG-4 AVC high-profile decoder

Memory (SDRAM): 256 Megabytes (shared with GPU)

 

raspberry-pi.jpg

 

The trial/developer's version went on general sale last Wednesday, as covered in this BBC article, and sold out pretty much instantly.

 

I heard about this when it was in development last summer, and thought it was just about the most awesome idea ever. When I heard just now that a version was on sale, I ordered it instantly, pretty much for my own geeky satisfaction... I must be even more of a geek than I thought, I never impulse-buy. :heh: And it'll probably be a long wait until the stock gets round to me...

 

Anyway, what do people think?

Edited by Supergrunch

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This is great. I have no idea how to code but it's made me think: If I ever have offspring, they are learning to code at least one language. I consider it far, far more important than a spoken foreign language (though that too)

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I've been watching this for a year or so, and then I tried and failed to purchase one. I've used Fedora before so it would have been nice. Gutted.

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Yeah I was pretty enthralled when this was featured in EDGE a couple months back.

 

I would love to learn a programming language, but it seems impenetrable, proabably because I associate it with mathematical proficiency. What would be a good entry point, and how would I go about it, is the main issue.

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Yep. I struggle with anything more complicated than bus fare so it's not something I can see myself learning. I always envied those around me who went down maths / science routes because I've always been fascinated by it but find it totally incomprehensible at the same time.

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Having a logical mind helps, but anyone can code really.

There's loads of resources available on the internet. I taught myself through trial and error after deciding what app I wanted to make, but there are better ways I'm sure.

Maybe this could help?

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That looks like the sort of thing that could function as a good introduction, yeah. I've got nothing else to do, so I'm gonna give it a shot.

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This is great. I have no idea how to code but it's made me think: If I ever have offspring, they are learning to code at least one language. I consider it far, far more important than a spoken foreign language (though that too)

 

Well, your native language is already english, so... yeah, I guess.

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Anyone looking to code who has no experience I would recommend Code Year. A new lesson once a week :)

 

http://codeyear.com/

 

I quite like the potential the Raspberry Pi offers, it can only be a good thing to get more young people into coding and computing rather than IT skills.

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I can't help but think this will be a bit of a "flash in the pan" job. It seems to me that the kind of people who are interesting in this are the ones already into computing. Those who aren't might have some curiousty but is it going to be enough to get them programming? I'm not so sure. I don't think they care enough about how it all works - they just want the end product.

 

The problem lies partially in the teaching of IT and whilst they may have scrapped the frankly atrocious curriculum, they still have a boat load of useless IT teachers who got the job based on their ability to use MS Office not quite as badly as everyone else in the school.

 

Still, for parents, it's going to cost mom a lot less than that electric guitar she got little Johnny after he decided he wanted to become a rockstar for a month until he got one and then forgot about it.

 

But then if you have a computer, there is absolutely nothing stopping you from learning to program anyway if that's what you really want to do. If your computer is getting you online to a site to buy the thing, I'm sure it can run notepad++ and what else do you need? Yes, a good IDE is nice (and I'd be lost at times without VS2010 - anyone tried VS11 yet?), but then for starting out, you don't need anything that fancy and a lot of companies out there will be using there own software, so it helps not to get too reliant on certain ones.

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I can't help but think this will be a bit of a "flash in the pan" job. It seems to me that the kind of people who are interesting in this are the ones already into computing. Those who aren't might have some curiousty but is it going to be enough to get them programming? I'm not so sure. I don't think they care enough about how it all works - they just want the end product.

 

The problem lies partially in the teaching of IT and whilst they may have scrapped the frankly atrocious curriculum, they still have a boat load of useless IT teachers who got the job based on their ability to use MS Office not quite as badly as everyone else in the school.

 

Still, for parents, it's going to cost mom a lot less than that electric guitar she got little Johnny after he decided he wanted to become a rockstar for a month until he got one and then forgot about it.

 

But then if you have a computer, there is absolutely nothing stopping you from learning to program anyway if that's what you really want to do. If your computer is getting you online to a site to buy the thing, I'm sure it can run notepad++ and what else do you need? Yes, a good IDE is nice (and I'd be lost at times without VS2010 - anyone tried VS11 yet?), but then for starting out, you don't need anything that fancy and a lot of companies out there will be using there own software, so it helps not to get too reliant on certain ones.

I think part of the point is that parents are often terrified of letting their kids do anything other than the most obvious things with their computers in the fear that they'll screw them up - after all, to many parents, they're highly expensive magic boxes that would be very costly to replace. Raspberry pis provide kids with a much cheaper playground, and it's also plausible that they can have a personal one in their room, especially given they can connect to tvs - even if parents let kids code on the family computer, they're likely to get kicked off a lot of the time. I think you're right that only kids who have some inclination towards coding will be interested, but currently lots of people with that inclination just have it suppressed.

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I think part of the point is that parents are often terrified of letting their kids do anything other than the most obvious things with their computers in the fear that they'll screw them up - after all, to many parents, they're highly expensive magic boxes that would be very costly to replace. Raspberry pis provide kids with a much cheaper playground, and it's also plausible that they can have a personal one in their room, especially given they can connect to tvs - even if parents let kids code on the family computer, they're likely to get kicked off a lot of the time. I think you're right that only kids who have some inclination towards coding will be interested, but currently lots of people with that inclination just have it suppressed.

 

I always thought most parents used to buy computers mostly for their kids anyway to do their homework until it became as standard a household item like a TV for vacuum cleaner.

 

The children are also far more tech savvy than their parents and most of them can't even seem to put a simple lock on the interent browser to keep the little ones away from daddies' favourites folder :p Besides, if the parents are kicking them off the computer when they can see what they are up to, I can't imagine them wanting their kids squirreled away in their room where they can't.

 

You can connect them to a TV but you still need an input device to use the thing. Also, unless it comes with some giant instruction manual on how to program, surely the kids will need an internet source close by to tell them what does what or they aren't going to get very far and will give up before ink on the receipt has dried.

 

I don't see how this device will stop that squashing of the desire to learn programming. It's just another piece of hardware to code on like a programmable calculator. There are ways to nurture the talent already that don't require any expenditure if you already own a computer.

 

Maybe I'm missing something big here and I'm going to look stupid when it clicks but whatever it is, I don't see it.

Edited by Captain Falcon

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I'm with you Capitan. Does this actually make it any easier to learn or is it just a really cheap option?

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I think it has tremendous value in terms of being able to be used in practically any classroom. Being amazingly compact and giving students the ability to program for mobile-like devices which they will understand the real world uses of. Also don't undersell how important it is to say to a student "you can make this do anything" with very few limits of where it might be deployed.

 

For instance, this little board itself could hold a large section of the code for the workings of a car, in terms of the dashboard display, audio for built in bluetooth, storage of logs for monitoring and so on.

 

There is nothing that should stop a student from potentially making a prototype using the actual board itself and going through the full development process.

 

On a completely different note, thanks to @Rowan, I started to learn how to program in Java today. Thanks dude.

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I'm with you Capitan. Does this actually make it any easier to learn or is it just a really cheap option?

 

I think it's cheap and they're hoping that schools are going to be buying them (at first) rather than the parents so that coding can be taught in a classroom environment.

 

From the video I think the coding language used is very simple so that kids will be able to use it.

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How is this any better at coding than, say, a normal PC?

 

On the subject of the "computers for all students" thing. My old school has a pretty good scheme going for it. They're offering all staff and students a netbook (a pretty decent one, with Windows 7 and Office 2010) for £1 a week for three years (£156 in total). Once these three years are up...it's theirs to keep.

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I always thought most parents used to buy computers mostly for their kids anyway to do their homework until it became as standard a household item like a TV for vacuum cleaner.

 

The children are also far more tech savvy than their parents and most of them can't even seem to put a simple lock on the interent browser to keep the little ones away from daddies' favourites folder :p Besides, if the parents are kicking them off the computer when they can see what they are up to, I can't imagine them wanting their kids squirreled away in their room where they can't.

 

You can connect them to a TV but you still need an input device to use the thing. Also, unless it comes with some giant instruction manual on how to program, surely the kids will need an internet source close by to tell them what does what or they aren't going to get very far and will give up before ink on the receipt has dried.

 

I don't see how this device will stop that squashing of the desire to learn programming. It's just another piece of hardware to code on like a programmable calculator. There are ways to nurture the talent already that don't require any expenditure if you already own a computer.

 

Maybe I'm missing something big here and I'm going to look stupid when it clicks but whatever it is, I don't see it.

Well, it of course doesn't offer any real advantages over an actual computer (other than maybe size), but the price tag is so low that it reaches out to people who either don't have a home PC, or can't code on their main PC as they'd like to for whatever reasons. And that's without mentioning the applications it could have in schools. People who already have as much access to computers as they want aren't really the target market, although it's possible that something more oriented towards programming might push some people towards it, but that's besides the point. And sure, you need an input device as well as a TV, but that costs all of £10, so the whole setup remains about a third of the price of programmable calculators, which only tend to support BASIC and assembly anyway. And there'll presumably be some documentation, but the reason it has an ethernet input is so kids can look into more advanced materials etc. online.

I'm with you Capitan. Does this actually make it any easier to learn or is it just a really cheap option?

It's just a cheap option, albeit one with various open-source packages for learning pre-installed.

How is this any better at coding than, say, a normal PC?

It's not - it is a PC, just a very cheap one, that will come with various preinstalled packages (some learn to code for kids thing, then support for python, C and some other things if I remember correctly, with a focus on python). But yeah, it's a PC, so you can do whatever you want with it ultimately, although it of course has limited memory and specs. And Windows currently doesn't support ARM processors (although I think Windows 8 might?) so for now it'll all be Linux. Which is probably better to help people actually understand computers.

Edited by Supergrunch

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Yeah I was pretty enthralled when this was featured in EDGE a couple months back.

 

I would love to learn a programming language, but it seems impenetrable, proabably because I associate it with mathematical proficiency. What would be a good entry point, and how would I go about it, is the main issue.

 

http://hackety.com/

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I think it has tremendous value in terms of being able to be used in practically any classroom. Being amazingly compact and giving students the ability to program for mobile-like devices which they will understand the real world uses of. Also don't undersell how important it is to say to a student "you can make this do anything" with very few limits of where it might be deployed.

 

For instance, this little board itself could hold a large section of the code for the workings of a car, in terms of the dashboard display, audio for built in bluetooth, storage of logs for monitoring and so on.

 

There is nothing that should stop a student from potentially making a prototype using the actual board itself and going through the full development process.

 

On a completely different note, thanks to @Rowan, I started to learn how to program in Java today. Thanks dude.

 

Exactly.

 

I spent most of my school years and my home life without a computer. By gosh, I wish I had been able to even login to a computer, let alone program.

 

It might seem strange and far-fetched to imagine this tiny Pi could help, but imagine if schools did take it on board! I only started to learn anything other than word in College, by that point I was 16 and had no interest in it whatsoever, not that my College had anything that could teach me code except maybe Flash and Visual basic (god I hated VB). It seems that times haven't really changed much after speaking to my cousin's daughter, who in-fact although can use a computer very well, has no other real skills except how to turn it on, browse the internet and play games, mostly because nobody has taught her anything else!

 

I'm sorely tempted to buy one, more so because it'll kick me the kick up the bum to learn something new with my computer.

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So people have started to receive their units! Has anyone got hold of one yet? Pics please!!!!!

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I'm baffled at what all the fuss is about.

 

As Cube said... I don't see why this is any more beneficial to a kid learning to program on a PC, other than a big marketing push. (other countries where personal computers are less standard is another issue)

 

Kids are 1000's of times more likely to screw a computer downloading stuff from the internet than programming.

 

After investing millions in computers... why should schools shell out more hardware (though admittedly low price) for a more limited device. In addition to this... monitors still need to be bought to plug the thing into.

 

One argument I've heard is giving kids a persistent workspace they can take home, but I don't know if schools should risk them going walkabout at home.

 

The most convincing argument is that the simpler architecture makes it easier to do low-level stuff with the hardware.

 

In terms of encouraging kids to program I'd think it'd be far more beneficial to push simpler development stuff on consoles. The spectrum was a development tool not just a media playback device. Kids are used to consoles, they associate them with fun. Get a development push on them and we'll be sorted for young programmers.

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I think essentially, it has less risk. Who wants kids somehow messing up the school computer system?

 

Pretty impossible to happen if they have some admin who know what they're doing, but still, it's probably 'the concern'. Hell, I can't even change my desktop or blood taskbar options on a computer at work! Who's going to let them run programs that might want more rights on the school computers? What happens when they learn to write something to circumvent security etc?

 

(notsurethey'dactuallyneedadminrights etc and this is a post of me moving into old and out of touch age)

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