[James-Livesey]

As much as the Raspberry Pi is really great for computing education, in my personal opinion, I think the micro:bit does well in terms of setting it up and getting started with it, especially in a school environment when there'll be around 20-or-so of these devices all being used by students.

With the Pi, you have to format the SD card and flash an OS to it, then plug in the peripherals such as the display, keyboard and mouse. While schools will likely have this equipment, having to reconnect all these devices from a school PC can be a chore, especially when it comes to the end of the lesson. Schools would likely also have to issue a lot of these peripherals alongside Pis for kids to use them as their only computer in the house, and that can get expensive.

With the micro:bit, all you need is a computer (which most schools will have), a USB cable (supplied with micro:bits) and a connection to the internet to access the online IDEs. Granted, that does place some barriers to their use at home when kids don't have a companion computing device for coding on.

Despite the micro:bit being limited as a microcontroller with a 5x5 pixel display and 2 user buttons, it does have a lot of on-board sensors that can bring a lot of potential opportunities to students in terms of creating physical projects that Raspberry Pis don't have built-in (you have to purchase external sensors, such as accelerometers, to match the functionality).

That being said, the micro:bit does require a special connector to use its GPIO pins in a DIP format that can be connected to a breadboard (the Pi is better at this due to its GPIO header). And, while the Pi does give a full-blown Linux environment that would have been great for all learners to interact with, the immediacy and portability of the micro:bit does have some advantages for new learners.

I was in fact in Year 5 back when the micro:bit was launched and given out to Year 5 school children, and now I'm an apprentice at the BBC (similar stories exist for the original BBC Micro); so I'd say in that respect that it was overall a good investment from the BBC :)

That's my thoughts, anyway!

[physicsguy]

The issue with the MicroBit was that it wasn't really a well thought out initiative with multi year funding. They gave them out for free to one single school year, and then schools had to pay for them which meant practically that most schools didn't do anything with them because it wasn't worth the time investment. They were also late delivering, so didn't turn up at the start of the school year when they were supposed to but half way through the spring term. I helped do some training of teachers to use it in 2015 while I was doing my PhD, and they'd not even got the kit for their classes at that point.

[James-Livesey]

With mentioning that while I was still interested in programming and even had a Pi before I got my micro:bit, I'd say that the micro:bit did introduce me to microcontroller development.

[aa-jv]

With the Pi, you have to format the SD card and flash an OS to it, then plug in the peripherals such as the display, keyboard and mouse. While schools will likely have this equipment, having to reconnect all these devices from a school PC can be a chore, especially when it comes to the end of the lesson. Schools would likely also have to issue a lot of these peripherals alongside Pis for kids to use them as their only computer in the house, and that can get expensive.

These are valuable computing skills that should be being taught to future programmers in their teenage years, already. The 'hassle' you claim is really the process of learning that should be promoted, not avoided because its 'too difficult'.

The micro:bit is entirely a specialist computer for which - yes, a basic set of computer fundamentals will be learned - but those same principles are equally attainable with the rPi, with the added benefit that students will also gain operator skills that are vital to their ability to be productive in this field - whereas the micro:bit will leave them with a lot of unlearned essentials.

As a parent (and 40+ years of experience systems-software developer) I would much rather my kids gain their computing expertise with a standard, easily attainable raspberry Pi platform than with the proprietary, not-standard micro:bit. Sure, they'd get some embedded experience - but that is possible with the rPi too.

The micro:bit is proprietary. The raspberry Pi, not so much (in terms of accessibility/availability). I think micro:bit is a step backwards for computer education.

[andyjohnson0]

I beg to differ. Formatting and flashing an sd card are worthy skills, but are unlikely to capture the imagination of a school age child. Making a basic alarm from a light sensor, an led, and a microcontroller (such as a micro:bit) just might.

RasPis are great, but they seem too much like the sort of phone-like "well behaved appliances" that are ubiquitous in all our lives now. Imo, as a starter platform for children they are just too complex, they present too high an obstacle to get started, and have too much potential for distraction. I suspect that a lot of Pi's that were provided to children ended up just being used to play Minecraft.

(I'm also a parent. Learned to write software in the early/mid 80s on BBC/Acorn computers.)

[boffinAudio]

Could not disagree with this position more.

Teaching kids some proprietary thing that is only available in a special situation, versus teaching them broadly applicable skills that are entirely relevant, after 40 years of computing history, is very much more valuable - as a parent - than the alternative.

Also a parent, also learned to program on an 8-bit system, taught my kids computing with the Raspberry Pi and they still use them for things way beyond the Minecraft zone... just yesterday the younger of the teens figured out how to use his rPi to catch his older brother entering his room. Sure, he could have done that with the micro:bit too - but that would have been an artificial ceiling for things - as it stands, he's been spending the morning working out how to get his brothers' guilty pics uploaded to the family NAS, which is another extremely valuable skill that this teenager has now developed in a matter of days, which would not have been easy to attain with the micro:bit.

I think the micro:bit, as has been mentioned earlier, is proprietary and limited. There's nothing to learn there that can't also be learned on rPi, and the rPi gives far better future-proof opportunities.

The only 'advantage' is that micro:bit might be easier to teach - but that is just excuse-making for poor educational standards. I'd much rather my kids' teachers have the skills and ability to teach them future-proof computer subjects, such as the raspberryPi (the younger one has now just asked for their own Hetzner account) than limit them to proprietary stuff that isn't available anywhere else in the world ..

It is beyond embarassing that we are graduating students who don't know the difference between a File and a Folder, or why you need to format storage devices, or even what a storage device is .. micro:bit will re-enforce that ignorance in a generation of students - raspberryPi entirely discourages it and prepares the student better for the world, imho...

[badcppdev]

My 2p as parent with RPis + multiple Microbits in the house.

Microbits are far more limited in their capabilities but they are a useful stepping stone because they are limited. They can be used like a piece of lego as part of a larger creation.

They have inbuilt switches and sensors and it is easier to connect extra components to a Microbit. You don't even need a breakout board. They run off batteries quite happily and once you have uploaded a program onto the Microbit you might only need that single battery box. And if you have two or more of them then you can use the inbuilt wireless connectivity very easily.

The proprietary nature of the code running the RPis and Microbits is not a factor for me. Once my kids get closer to being teenagers hopefully there'll be some fully open platforms available for the next steps.

[andyjohnson0]

Congratulations. Your children are clearly knowledgeable and sophisticated users of technology.

Most kids don't get that far. They don't have parents like you (or me) to give them one to one help and encouragement.

> The only 'advantage' is that micro:bit might be easier to teach

Thats the point. Start with simple, concrete stuff. Work up to the complicated, abstract stuff. Basic pedagogy. Raspberry Pis undoubtedly have their place, but they're less than ideal teaching platforms if your aim is to get children interested and enthusiastic about tech, rather than simply being "users".

(As for future proof skills, I suspect you know as well as I do that nothing ever is - as the absence of BBC Model Bs in todays classrooms demonstrates.)

[robertlagrant]

I had a BBC B growing up and I didn't know what a folder was, nor what a storage device is. Unless you count the giant 5 1/4 floppy drive.

I could write code, though.

[boffinAudio]

The only reason you didn't learn this on your BBC B is because it didn't have a proper DOS.

I bet you know what a Folder and a File are now, though. You wouldn't get too far as a modern developer, otherwise.

That's the point: teach kids real skills, not decadence. Too bad if its "too hard" - don't pretend to be an educator if that's the case.

[michaelt]

> Making a basic alarm from a light sensor, an led, and a microcontroller (such as a micro:bit) just might.

While I applaud any efforts to get more kids into programming, what I couldn't figure out with the micro:bit was its market positioning relative to the Arduino, ESP8266, Raspberry Pi and arm mbed.

Between those there were already several options with the explicit goal of inspiring kids into programming, there was already well documented stuff for baby's first blinking LED, already 100MHz+ sub-$5 options, already options with wireless, already options with online compilers, already options with micropython support, and even an option that didn't need a PC and could run fully-fledged python.