Hardware Raspberry Pi review

Got one on order, but they sent a confusing email about not coming until August. Can't wait to mess with it.

Does anyone know if Scratch will run on this? I'm just wondering if the Ubuntu version would run on the Debian remix. If the main idea is to get kids into programming, this would be the perfect introduction.

 

Scratch has been talked about an awful lot for the Pi. I don't know if anyone has actually got it running on the real hardware yet (they may have done so on a Virtual Machine), but it's probably in the pipeline.

 

Definitely gonna get one when available.
I hope my son jumps all over it like I did with my Speccy back in the day, but I kinda doubt it
Either way, I'll find a few uses for it.

 

For 1GHz you need cooling!

 

You could always run "FUSE" on it and get the best of both worlds

 

Ah, that'll explain the fan on my mobile phone

 

Obviously the difference between now and back in the 80s was back then it was likely your Spectrum was the only computer/games machine you owned whereas the Pi has to compete with everything else.

I am not sure if it will produce a nation of programmers as intended but I would really love to get my hands on one.

 

I am encouraged, but skeptical, about the educational aims of the foundation. Indeed the whole reason for the existence of the foundation in the first place is to improve computer science education, but education isn't going to be the panacea that people like Rory Cellan-Pr**k-Jones from the BBC keeps blathering about. It is a very cheap piece of hardware which schools <edit> and children </edit> could easily afford, but this isn't going to turn every school child in 5 years time into a programmer.

It will be interesting to see what's in store for the upcoming educational launch. However, as a nerd/hacker, I cannot frikkin' wait to get my hands on one. Or several. I really wish RS would tell me when I can expect to be able to order one!

PS, by the way Rory, HTML is emphatically not programming - the clue is in the acronym: HyperText Markup Language. It's an easy start, but it's not programming.

 

Yes RCJ does come across as the kind of guy who, when jotting down an email address, will ask "is that upper or lower case?"

 

He is the epitome of the BBC dumbing down their content. Claiming that he wrote an app when all he really did was write some HTML was really the straw that broke the camels back for me; it's no wonder that real programmers were, as he put it, "sniffy" about it.