4 ms·

Sorry if that's not directly related to the post. I don't really get the story behind Rasberry PI. Is the goal to make something cheap enough so that it spreads

by dgerges 14y ago

Sorry if that's not directly related to the post. I don't really get the story behind Rasberry PI. Is the goal to make something cheap enough so that it spreads widely ? Otherwise there are plenty of platforms that would be better for learning programming starting with a simple browser no ?

ConstantineXVI 14y ago
You can't program on bare metal or arbitrary hardware I/O with just a browser. And running the OS off a SD card makes recovering from screw-ups easier + less costly, so less barriers to tinkering vs. a "real" PC.
- dgerges 14y ago
  You're right, there's some programming you can't do inside of a browser, I was just forgetting all this low level stuff which happens behind the browser :-)
grannyg00se 14y ago
I don't fully understand the excitement either. But I don't think learning to program is really one its strong points. Learning to work with input/output systems might be on the list but there are other platforms for that as well. I think the pi has a combination of low cost, relatively high processing power, and significant input/output capabilities that really attracts hardware hackers. For learning to program I think I'd just go with a javascript scratchpad in a browser. Or for core concepts and less kludge, maybe just a node repl. I guess you could use a pi for that if you don't have a machine that you want to play with but that isn't why people are jazzed about the pi.
- dgerges 14y ago
  I share the view that Javascript can be a very universal learning environment (even if in itself that may not be the greatest langage to learn)
beagle3 14y ago
It's supposed to be a new "BBC Computer". The excitement is trivial if you had ever used one (or it's peers of the era, ZX Spectrum, C64, Amstrad CPC or Oric Atmos -- though the BBC was head and shoulders above the rest when it came to learning to program and tinker). If you haven't - it might take a while to explain (and I'm not going to try in the HN comment box - read about the BBC Master, watch the show "Micro Men", and read about the history of Acorn and ARM if you are interested). I think it can be summed us thusly: RPi is a project by people who grow up during the golden time of British personal computing - who are trying to reestablish the magic.

by dgerges 14y ago

ConstantineXVI 14y ago

You can't program on bare metal or arbitrary hardware I/O with just a browser. And running the OS off a SD card makes recovering from screw-ups easier + less costly, so less barriers to tinkering vs. a "real" PC.

dgerges 14y ago
You're right, there's some programming you can't do inside of a browser, I was just forgetting all this low level stuff which happens behind the browser :-)

grannyg00se 14y ago

I don't fully understand the excitement either. But I don't think learning to program is really one its strong points. Learning to work with input/output systems might be on the list but there are other platforms for that as well. I think the pi has a combination of low cost, relatively high processing power, and significant input/output capabilities that really attracts hardware hackers. For learning to program I think I'd just go with a javascript scratchpad in a browser. Or for core concepts and less kludge, maybe just a node repl. I guess you could use a pi for that if you don't have a machine that you want to play with but that isn't why people are jazzed about the pi.

dgerges 14y ago
I share the view that Javascript can be a very universal learning environment (even if in itself that may not be the greatest langage to learn)

beagle3 14y ago

It's supposed to be a new "BBC Computer". The excitement is trivial if you had ever used one (or it's peers of the era, ZX Spectrum, C64, Amstrad CPC or Oric Atmos -- though the BBC was head and shoulders above the rest when it came to learning to program and tinker). If you haven't - it might take a while to explain (and I'm not going to try in the HN comment box - read about the BBC Master, watch the show "Micro Men", and read about the history of Acorn and ARM if you are interested). I think it can be summed us thusly: RPi is a project by people who grow up during the golden time of British personal computing - who are trying to reestablish the magic.