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Thoughts on the Rasberry Pi
Mar. 5th, 2012 10:08 pmHaving mulled this over since last week, I still remain to be convinced that the Rasberry Pi is the saviour of computer science that everyone desperately wants it to be.
Firstly, I'm not convinced that a computer without a screen is going to be much use. Sure, not bundling a monitor keeps the price down. It also taps into an old-time nostalgia for the days of the BBC and the Spectrum. But it also makes the machine, as it currently stands, unsuited to classroom use. Which somewhat undermines its educational potential.
Secondly, a lot of the hype around the Rasberry Pi seems to assume that people will become interested in programming for its own sake. But I suspect, based on my own experience, that quite a lot of people come to programming after discovering its utility value. Despite growing up a hardcore nerd and learning BASIC during my (primary) school holidays, I was never terribly interested in programming because it couldn't help me with the day-to-day stuff that really interested me. It was only when I got a Casio fx-7700 graphical calculator that things took off. I realised that I could write little programs to do the tedious bits of maths that my dyslexia made me bad at. I could I test the edge conditions with cases whose answers I knew (or could work out) allowing me to have confidence that the results of general cases were also right. And because the thing was small and self-contained and I carried it around with me, it was always on hand when I needed to do some tedious bit of classwork.
So while the Rasberry Pi appeals to my sense of nostaligia — you have to plug it in to your TV! — I think its lack of portability and accessibility in educational environments will prevent it from being the revolutionary gadget everyone seems to want it to.
Firstly, I'm not convinced that a computer without a screen is going to be much use. Sure, not bundling a monitor keeps the price down. It also taps into an old-time nostalgia for the days of the BBC and the Spectrum. But it also makes the machine, as it currently stands, unsuited to classroom use. Which somewhat undermines its educational potential.
Secondly, a lot of the hype around the Rasberry Pi seems to assume that people will become interested in programming for its own sake. But I suspect, based on my own experience, that quite a lot of people come to programming after discovering its utility value. Despite growing up a hardcore nerd and learning BASIC during my (primary) school holidays, I was never terribly interested in programming because it couldn't help me with the day-to-day stuff that really interested me. It was only when I got a Casio fx-7700 graphical calculator that things took off. I realised that I could write little programs to do the tedious bits of maths that my dyslexia made me bad at. I could I test the edge conditions with cases whose answers I knew (or could work out) allowing me to have confidence that the results of general cases were also right. And because the thing was small and self-contained and I carried it around with me, it was always on hand when I needed to do some tedious bit of classwork.
So while the Rasberry Pi appeals to my sense of nostaligia — you have to plug it in to your TV! — I think its lack of portability and accessibility in educational environments will prevent it from being the revolutionary gadget everyone seems to want it to.
