£16 home computer to kickstart young developers

[diablothe2nd]

i'll be getting three or four of the £22 ones... I notice XBMC are on the bandwagon which is great as both my original xboxes are getting old and can't play HD movies, while the Pi will be able to through HDMI which is awesome

I'll have one running as a NAS server for all the other tv's in the house can't believe they're only 2.5 watts!

[Coagulus]

I will certainly be getting one, and enjoying it I'm sure

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by imigger

there better things out there to get kids into and at the end of the day i want my kinds to be practical and actualy learn something of some use

Yeah, learning how to program isn't useful

Originally Posted by imigger

this is not it and never will be, considering how the wages for IT have dropped and disapeared ,IT isnt worth learning if you want kids to learn sumit try electrician or builder not IT its dead in the water

IT is, of course, not dead in the water. The whole developed world depends on it, and educating skilled IT people is absolutely mandatory.

[fishyfish]

@imigger

Actually IT wages are still quite decent outside of the usual claptrap that gets called "IT" these days. Programmers (real programmers) can still command a good wage as the number of people capable of certain tasks are in short supply, and in pretty heavy demand. This is a part of what this incentive is trying to address.

Personally Id like my kids to excercise thier brains as much as thier bodies.

@thread
Anyone know when they go on sale? I'd like to buy one

[jimmy2x2x]

Originally Posted by fishyfish

Anyone know when they go on sale? I'd like to buy one

Thought it was the end of this month

[wilshy]

Originally Posted by imigger

this is not it and never will be, considering how the wages for IT have dropped and disapeared ,IT isnt worth learning if you want kids to learn sumit try electrician or builder not IT its dead in the water ,

Not a penny in it anymore is there. http://bit.ly/seb4TX Hasn't the building trade gone belly up since the recession as well?

Have been following it for a while and, agreed, there's a whole load of kids nowadays who don't give a toss there are a load that do. Wasn't that the same "back on the day"? You had those that just wanted to play games, in fact the majority just wanted to do that or not have an interest at all and the back bedroom developers that went on to be pioneers. Admittedly it takes a whole lot more to become a pioneer these days but that doesn't mean you can't become a damn good earner from learning on something like this.

I need to find a reason to buy one of these. Even at £25 though, it's going to be little more than a toy.

[alexh]

You seen they have auctioned off the first 10 boards and they went for crazy amounts. I wonder what is happening to that money (I haven't read any of the blogs etc)

[gunni]

Originally Posted by alexh

You seen they have auctioned off the first 10 boards and they went for crazy amounts. I wonder what is happening to that money (I haven't read any of the blogs etc)

They are set up as a charity and that money is going to go into the charity to produce boards for schools. Board number 10 was over £2000 last time I looked, good to see people getting behind them like that - if only we could do the same thing for Amiga!

[deicidal]

Well I think I will be picking one up when the come out . Personally I think this sort of thing is great

Manufacturing of the first batch has begun, so hopefully not long now...
I wonder how well UAE / E-UAE will run on these? Pocket-sized amiga sounds fun

[gunni]

and this from the BBC today http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-16493929
fits in nicely with the Raspberry pi plan to be the BBC Micro of a new generation...
for some reason whilst reading that article I remembered making "teletext" pages on the Beebs in Computer Science at school - anyone else have to do that? lol

[musojon74]

I'm definitely having at least 2 :-) sounds fun. Especially when RISC os works on them. :-)

Edit: Hey maybe we should port os4.

[gunni]

Originally Posted by musojon74

Edit: Hey maybe we should port os4.

OS4 on ARM would be awesome... especially with the specs of the high-end stuff thats coming out now!

[rare_j]

I'll be getting one as soon as they're sold boxed up.
At £25 or whatever that is it's be rude not to!

Originally Posted by musojon74

I'm definitely having at least 2 :-) sounds fun. Especially when RISC os works on them. :-)

Theres a number of threads and a roadmap on www.riscosopen.org about porting to the pi, looks like they have a way to go yet with driver support though

In the meantime its looking like Debian gnu/linux is the OS of choice. Ive used debian for 10 years in business for low cost servers. Its stable and has a huge amount of pre-compiled apps available, id highly recommend giving it a try while waiting for a RISCos port.

For those considering buying a Pi, but are unfimiliar with linux,theres a tutorial channel with the basics of setting up debian (in a Virtual machine on windows) ... well worth a look. http://www.youtube.com/user/RaspberryPiTutorials

[P-J]

Originally Posted by imigger

what a waste of time and money kids only want to play with buttons and this hasnt got very many if any

Yeah, you're right all kids are useless. None of them want to program. They just want to play Modern Warfare all day, right?

That's the biggest load of shit I've heard in a long time, along with your other comments above. Tons of kids are into programming. I work in the games industry and you see them coming through all the time. You think just because the Amiga is dead that no-one under the age of 30 tinkers with their computer anymore?

Jesus. I've just read your other comments whilst typing this. I think I'll weigh out of this until you've taken your medication.

[P-J]

I'll be interested to see what they offer regarding development tools. Perhaps a complete system with documentation to tutor the user through their first program, and so on.

Much like in the 'golden-age' that someone described above. Not my words though

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by imigger

but as for the thread we will wait and see but ill say goodbye to it now ,just like all the other cheap computer bbc sinclair and countless others.

You mean those Sinclair, BBC and Commodore 8Bit machines that took the 80s by storm, were present in pretty much every household in britain and started a computer revolution in the UK? Those machines that were single-handedly responsible for teaching an entire generation (or three) how to code?

Here's a hint for you - they were so popular because they were cheap enough for anyone to buy their kid for christmas. Back when computers were thousands of pounds for a machine that could barely struggle to draw graphics, they were available for a couple of hundred pounds and did more than most people ever dreamed that a computer could do.

Originally Posted by P-J

I'll be interested to see what they offer regarding development tools. Perhaps a complete system with documentation to tutor the user through their first program, and so on.

Much like in the 'golden-age' that someone described above. Not my words though

We need an "instantly available" BASIC interpreter out the box - something to encourage kids to start learning to code... :-D

Actually, all joking aside, if the first language that kids come across with one of these is "C", we're getting it wrong. I started coding in Sinclair BASIC at age 7, and there is no way on earth I would have been able to code in something as convoluted and complex as C or C++ at that age, and what we really need to do is to capture their imaginations as early as possible. Once their minds mature somewhat at age 11-13 then they can upgrade to the higher (or lower) languages, just as we did with the transition from BASIC to 6502 or z80.

D.

[Adropac2]

I'm still not exactly sure what this is. It's essentially a cheap enough computer right? so those unable to afford a computer, get to do so or are even just given one from the school? And it has it's lite based os

The idea to to encourage people that might otherwise be turned off using computers, in the hope of growing potential talent some?

And i do agree with you Dunny, i'm understanding of language in the form of basic from C64 etc but putting C in front of me back then wouldn't have helped my understanding of logic much. There are probably countless people that love the idea of programming but just don't bother when they see the likes of C. Mind you it seems this isn't the point of the device?

[Overkill]

I saw this news today, I shall buy the LAN version just to see what it can do.