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I'm a huge Raspberry Pi fan. I use it in my robotics work and I have two sons who I set up a Pi for years ago to learn to code on, but... Did Raspberry Pi fail

by hugs 3y ago

I'm a huge Raspberry Pi fan. I use it in my robotics work and I have two sons who I set up a Pi for years ago to learn to code on, but... Did Raspberry Pi fail at its original mission of inspiring young programmers? It's obviously a huge success in industry and in the maker/hobbyist community, but it feels like kids would rather use a phone or a tablet to do anything. And in my work as a robotics team coach for middle-schoolers (First Lego League), we do all the coding with Chromebooks. (fwiw: both my sons are now either currently majoring in computer science in college, or will next year... but cumulative time spent working with the Pis over the years was minimal. Either way, maybe Pi and I should take the win?)

tomatocracy 3y ago
From what I see with my own children, Scratch has very much ended up as the "go-to" tool for teaching coding in schools. But Scratch doesn't really "inspire" them as such. What does seem to inspire my children in terms of coding is hardware - at younger ages it's things like Beebot and Ozobot, and then moving onto projects using the GPIO pins on the Pi - eg we got a Pi-controlled robot car kit a couple of years ago which has been great.
mholm 3y ago
Honestly, I think the idea of a less capable computer being used to teach kids to love _programming_ was misguided from the start. Raspberry pis are excellent for making electronics projects accessible and easy. I had an intro class in college that used Pi's for teaching electronics. It dramatically expands what's possible because you have a real computer with accessible pins, and the ecosystem made it all simple and comfortable. It felt much more accessible than Arduinos. But teaching programming? Why? It does not enhance what's possible, it limits what's possible in a teaching way. That screams the sort of thing that educators would find useful and students would tolerate. Sure, they eventually get comfortable and see the benefits, but most of those aren't in programming.
bodge5000 3y ago
In my opinion, it's actually closer to its original mission than previously as it can, in its current form, be quite easily used as a main computer. Some kids will naturally like tinkering with these kinds of things and that's where the original, cheaper model is better, but most will want a computer to accomplish a task, so the best way to get them to learn this kind of thing is to give them a practical reason to. Want to play Minecraft/Roblox/Whatever on your pi? Go ahead, you just need to figure out how to actually set that up on Linux.
jdietrich 3y ago
>Did Raspberry Pi fail at its original mission of inspiring young programmers? Mostly yes, with a big but. Obviously the Pi has succeeded on its own terms in the hobbyist community (and industry, to a remarkable degree), but it was just too complicated and fragile and fiddly for most schoolkids to handle. The lessons from the failure of the RPi in education were the basis for the BBC micro:bit, a much simpler dev board based on an ARM microcontroller. The micro:bit is just a brilliant tool for teaching the first stages of CS and EE. There are multiple toolchains supporting Scratch, Swift, MicroPython and a variety of block-based visual programming environments. It can be programmed directly from a browser-based IDE, so you can get to hello world very quickly and it works on essentially any device with nothing to install. It has Bluetooth and a bunch of sensors, so it can do fun and interesting things. https://microbit.org/get-started/what-is-the-microbit/ https://microbit.org/get-started/what-is-the-microbit/ https://microbit.org/projects/make-it-code-it/ https://microbit.org/projects/make-it-code-it/
- anta40 3y ago
  >> "but it was just too complicated and fragile and fiddly for most schoolkids to handle" Really? Well I'm certainly not a highschooler, and have been working as a software developer for more than a decade. Until today, I see R Pi as tiny Linux box. Okay for running your PHP/Python apps. If you want to go lower level, which I believe is necessary for CS/EE education, perhaps get one of those ARM microcontrollers.
  - rovr138 3y ago
    Which RPi’s have you had? For me the OS, the SD card, the power have been the major fragile points it’s had (some have been fixed in iterations). For a school or people wanting to learn, that’s a lot of things you have to work around, keep in mind, or figure out when they happen. Not counting availability.
forinti 3y ago
I think you can say that, much like the BBC Micro, the Raspberry Pi succeeded in many areas, not just inspiring and educating kids. Of course it was never going to be as prevalent as any 8 bit micro, because the technology landscape nowadays is just endless. But it got some kids into tinkering, got older programmers into new sorts of projects, it got into industry, product development, gardening, home automation, on so on.
- fanf2 3y ago
  They have sold more Raspberries Pi than any 8 bit computer. Record holder for biggest sales of any desktop computer is the Commodore 64; Raspberry Pi has sold about 50% more so far.
RetroTechie 3y ago
> but it feels like kids would rather use a phone or a tablet to do anything. Please define "anything". Mobile devices are basically consumption-only devices. Yes there's lots of options to turn 'em into general purpose computers or even do development on them. But they just... aren't it. A RPi otoh is a general purpose computer (and Chromebooks too, for the most part).
boffinAudio 3y ago
>but it feels like kids would rather use a phone or a tablet to do anything Easy is the enemy of Good. People opt for the easy and lazy way, because learning is hard. Kids, encouraged to learn the hard things, become better and better at making those hard things easier for themselves. Kids, encouraged only to do the bare-minimum, 'easy approach' to things, only learn how to avoid doing anything hard. Disclaimer: anecdotal parent experience. Its always better to learn how to do things the hard way than the easy way.

by hugs 3y ago

tomatocracy 3y ago

From what I see with my own children, Scratch has very much ended up as the "go-to" tool for teaching coding in schools. But Scratch doesn't really "inspire" them as such. What does seem to inspire my children in terms of coding is hardware - at younger ages it's things like Beebot and Ozobot, and then moving onto projects using the GPIO pins on the Pi - eg we got a Pi-controlled robot car kit a couple of years ago which has been great.

mholm 3y ago

Honestly, I think the idea of a less capable computer being used to teach kids to love _programming_ was misguided from the start. Raspberry pis are excellent for making electronics projects accessible and easy. I had an intro class in college that used Pi's for teaching electronics. It dramatically expands what's possible because you have a real computer with accessible pins, and the ecosystem made it all simple and comfortable. It felt much more accessible than Arduinos. But teaching programming? Why? It does not enhance what's possible, it limits what's possible in a teaching way. That screams the sort of thing that educators would find useful and students would tolerate. Sure, they eventually get comfortable and see the benefits, but most of those aren't in programming.

bodge5000 3y ago

In my opinion, it's actually closer to its original mission than previously as it can, in its current form, be quite easily used as a main computer. Some kids will naturally like tinkering with these kinds of things and that's where the original, cheaper model is better, but most will want a computer to accomplish a task, so the best way to get them to learn this kind of thing is to give them a practical reason to. Want to play Minecraft/Roblox/Whatever on your pi? Go ahead, you just need to figure out how to actually set that up on Linux.

jdietrich 3y ago

>Did Raspberry Pi fail at its original mission of inspiring young programmers? Mostly yes, with a big but. Obviously the Pi has succeeded on its own terms in the hobbyist community (and industry, to a remarkable degree), but it was just too complicated and fragile and fiddly for most schoolkids to handle. The lessons from the failure of the RPi in education were the basis for the BBC micro:bit, a much simpler dev board based on an ARM microcontroller. The micro:bit is just a brilliant tool for teaching the first stages of CS and EE. There are multiple toolchains supporting Scratch, Swift, MicroPython and a variety of block-based visual programming environments. It can be programmed directly from a browser-based IDE, so you can get to hello world very quickly and it works on essentially any device with nothing to install. It has Bluetooth and a bunch of sensors, so it can do fun and interesting things. https://microbit.org/get-started/what-is-the-microbit/ https://microbit.org/get-started/what-is-the-microbit/ https://microbit.org/projects/make-it-code-it/ https://microbit.org/projects/make-it-code-it/

anta40 3y ago
>> "but it was just too complicated and fragile and fiddly for most schoolkids to handle" Really? Well I'm certainly not a highschooler, and have been working as a software developer for more than a decade. Until today, I see R Pi as tiny Linux box. Okay for running your PHP/Python apps. If you want to go lower level, which I believe is necessary for CS/EE education, perhaps get one of those ARM microcontrollers.
- rovr138 3y ago
  Which RPi’s have you had? For me the OS, the SD card, the power have been the major fragile points it’s had (some have been fixed in iterations). For a school or people wanting to learn, that’s a lot of things you have to work around, keep in mind, or figure out when they happen. Not counting availability.

forinti 3y ago

I think you can say that, much like the BBC Micro, the Raspberry Pi succeeded in many areas, not just inspiring and educating kids. Of course it was never going to be as prevalent as any 8 bit micro, because the technology landscape nowadays is just endless. But it got some kids into tinkering, got older programmers into new sorts of projects, it got into industry, product development, gardening, home automation, on so on.

fanf2 3y ago
They have sold more Raspberries Pi than any 8 bit computer. Record holder for biggest sales of any desktop computer is the Commodore 64; Raspberry Pi has sold about 50% more so far.

RetroTechie 3y ago

> but it feels like kids would rather use a phone or a tablet to do anything. Please define "anything". Mobile devices are basically consumption-only devices. Yes there's lots of options to turn 'em into general purpose computers or even do development on them. But they just... aren't it. A RPi otoh is a general purpose computer (and Chromebooks too, for the most part).

boffinAudio 3y ago

>but it feels like kids would rather use a phone or a tablet to do anything Easy is the enemy of Good. People opt for the easy and lazy way, because learning is hard. Kids, encouraged to learn the hard things, become better and better at making those hard things easier for themselves. Kids, encouraged only to do the bare-minimum, 'easy approach' to things, only learn how to avoid doing anything hard. Disclaimer: anecdotal parent experience. Its always better to learn how to do things the hard way than the easy way.