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PyCon: Eben Upton on the Raspberry PiPyCon: Eben Upton on the Raspberry PiPosted Mar 21, 2013 12:53 UTC (Thu) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784)In reply to: PyCon: Eben Upton on the Raspberry Pi by jmorris42 Parent article: PyCon: Eben Upton on the Raspberry Pi
Wouldn't it be better to simply package all the wonderful intro level teaching material and Pythonic software they have put together onto a CD-R for Linux (bootable live CD) and Windows? This is the most convincing argument against unquestioning adoption of the product in the education sector. Computers have become common in the schools of the "developed world", so a lack of hardware isn't the problem: it's the lack of appropriate software. Yes the hardware hacking is also a hook and something that kids need to learn about (but didn't really get to do in the 8bit world of yesterday). Hardware hacking was done at various levels - for example, wiring things up to various expansion ports - but serious hardware hacking was done less because it was a lot more involved, the exchange of knowledge was more restricted than it is now, and things are cheaper in real terms than they were then. Moreover, the computers themselves were the equivalent of the repeatedly mentioned "family PC" that tinkering children aren't supposed to be messing up, at least when considering the cost of replacing a microcomputer that has been accidentally damaged in a hardware hacking exercise. But again, a USB to GPIO/i2c/etc dongle with support in the distributed software bundle would be easily achievable in the same $25 price range and would have a full PC behind it for processing the data. I imagine that such dongles already exist and can't really believe that no-one has pitched this (even on a crowd-funding site) and seen it through to market.
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PyCon: Eben Upton on the Raspberry Pi Posted Mar 21, 2013 19:59 UTC (Thu) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] Computers have become common in the schools of the "developed world", so a lack of hardware isn't the problem: it's the lack of appropriate software. Yes, but the computers in school are confined to the »computer room«, and usually at least 3 out of 10 are out of commission because of viruses, etc. The nice thing about the Raspberry Pi is that every kid can have their own computer and take it home with them after school. Moreover, the computers themselves were the equivalent of the repeatedly mentioned "family PC" that tinkering children aren't supposed to be messing up The problem with messing up the »family PC« today is that one's big sister will come down on one like a ton of bricks if she can't get her history project done (or go on Facebook for that matter), and Mom and Dad will be less than enthusiastic about having to fix the PC again before they can use it to do whatever it is that they want to do. If the Raspberry Pi needs its SD card rewritten then at least the rest of the family can still go on the Internet.
PyCon: Eben Upton on the Raspberry Pi Posted Mar 21, 2013 21:51 UTC (Thu) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link]
It's certainly true that the "family PC" is more likely to be shared these days than it was, but I think people still disregard the cost argument too easily when reframing the 1980s as some time of unhindered computational experimentation. In fact, the blog post I linked to in my own commentary mentions someone almost ruining their Apple II with hardware modifications; such activities would have been much more risky back then: $1000 in early 1980s money is quite a sum now, and even ruining a C64 would have been more costly in real terms than replacing a fairly powerful laptop today.
I think it is nice that each child can take their computer around with them. It reminds me of the Acorn Pocket Book which was a rebadged Psion Series 3, but the difference is that the Raspberry Pi needs a display and thus largely relies on children having their own television because we all know how inconvenient it was back in the 1980s to share the family television. Yes, televisions are cheaper now, but it all adds up.
PyCon: Eben Upton on the Raspberry Pi Posted Mar 21, 2013 23:23 UTC (Thu) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] The difference between the 1980s and today is that the main application for home computers in the 1980s was fooling around. Today, the Internet is so pervasive in all aspects of modern life that a working computer is pretty much required for many serious things, including sending and receiving important e-mail, doing the taxes, schoolwork etc. Regardless of the hardware cost many people cannot afford fooling around with the »family PC« because all family members depend on it in various ways. It's great if one's family can afford more than one computer such that the kids can use one for fooling around and there is another one handy to go onto the Internet to figure out how to fix the first one if it is broken. Many people do not have that luxury. In that case a $35 Raspberry Pi is a more reasonable option than a second computer that costs several times as much even if one buys it used, and requires the same sort of peripherals (display, keyboard, mouse) as the Raspberry Pi. As far as the display requirement is concerned, one can use a Raspberry Pi with an old tube TV from the attic. It's not a lot of fun but it is better than nothing. Even if there is only one good monitor in the house one can plug it into the Raspberry Pi instead of the good PC and avoid breaking the good PC when fooling around.
PyCon: Eben Upton on the Raspberry Pi Posted Mar 22, 2013 13:41 UTC (Fri) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link]
I'm not disputing the inconvenience of messing up the family computer. My point was purely that the obstacle to hardware hacking in the 1980s was not the lack of access to the hardware internals (there were plenty of robots and other things made for the education market) but the huge financial penalty incurred if one damaged the computer. What we have seen is actually a shift in the consequences from financial inconvenience (spending a few thousand dollars in today's money) to practical inconvenience (having to log into the netbank from work to pay the bills).
So no, I don't disagree with you, but I think people underestimate the investments that people were having to make back in the day, and when people look for reasons why certain things were not rampantly popular they would do well to consider the matter of how much these things actually cost in real terms. (There's also the schoolyard arguments about certain computers being expensive, others being cheap, and which features were necessary, but one has to remember that the BBC Micro had to do so much that one wonders whether the BBC were actually trying to specify a technical platform for their own purposes, which in some ways they were.)
The appliance nature of the Raspberry Pi is a positive step forward (or backward to a simpler era, if you like) and one that the involuntary "cartel" of retailers, manufacturers and Microsoft has managed to keep away from the average consumer for far too long. And yes, the price is also very nice, and it certainly will help to lower hardware acquisition costs for a lot of people even if the board itself is not the total cost of the package. Where I come from, a lot of old TVs will have either antenna or SCART inputs and to use them will require yet more extras, just like using old school monitors will require adapters for the VGA inputs.
My point is that some of the practical aspects have been downplayed with a somewhat nostalgic spin on the inconveniences everyone had to endure back in the day. There will be add-ons that mitigate this, but a bit more foresight and less of the spin would have made a more convenient product, in my opinion.
PyCon: Eben Upton on the Raspberry Pi Posted Mar 22, 2013 18:34 UTC (Fri) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
calling a Pi an 'appliance' is seriously misleading.
Appliances are single purpose devices that almost always prevent you from making any changes to the software on the device.
If you squint hard enough, you could define a Pi this way, it's single purpose is to run a general purpose, open source operating system
But by that argument, Mac computers are appliances, their single purpose is to run OS/X.
I don't think you would find many people agreeing that Mac computers are appliances, and by the same token Pi computers are not appliances.
PyCon: Eben Upton on the Raspberry Pi Posted Mar 22, 2013 23:17 UTC (Fri) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link]
I meant appliance in the way that you switch it on and it just works. Given that the very nature of the device requires you to supply your own operating system and that you have complete control over what that is (subject to obvious technical constraints, in case anyone wants to pick apart that statement), I think it's obvious that I didn't mean appliance in the sense that only the manufacturer gets to decide how the device is used.
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