[mrmagooey]

Urgh, this is not "Unsuitable for Education", it's unsuitable for one pretty narrow (albeit central to the system) educative purpose around System-on-Chip's and GPU's.

Kids can still have a fully working linux system hooked up to their tv for $35, which regardless of the OSS status of the hardware is still a win for education in my opinion.

[Zenst]

Totaly agree and a computer is after all two parts the hardware and the software and the ability to change both and add on both with such a cheap setup is utterly perfect for break and play style education and that is how alot of people learn.

Another way to look at it is the the Author thinks everybody should learn to drive in a Porche. We all know 99%+ of us don't and start of with a cheap almost end user car and that is what the Pi is in many ways, cheap, effective at what it does and for those who want to go further then they will at least have the foundations to move on with solid grounding.

Sure some parts operate on closed source low-level hardware but who's to say that might not change later on down the line and to lambast it on that one area is missing out on so much.

[regularfry]

It's a win, just not as big a win as it might be. Still, a win is a win.

[slantyyz]

>> It's a win, just not as big a win as it might be.

You might be right, but context matters.

Me pulling my "cranky old man" card-- As Louis CK says, "Everything's amazing, nobody's happy."

My first computer was a 4K Tandy Color Computer, which cost something like $400 in 1982 (a significant expense at the time for my parents), and I learned to program in MS Basic.

To me, the Raspberry Pi is a huge win. It can do a million more things than I could do as a kid, and it's not relegated to loading code via cassette tapes or typing (we had to copy code verbatim from magazines back then).

That the device is so inexpensive makes the barrier to get into programming lower than it has ever been... Amazing.

[regularfry]

I'm not arguing with any of that. If I try to draw a comparison between what got me excited about 8-bits and what's available on the RPi, I still see a disconnect. There was a visceral connection between POKEing a memory location and a pixel going black on my Spectrum, and that's just not there with the RPi. There's a big black lump of Broadcom-stuff between me and the screen.

[reidrac]

I totally agree.

Actually the point of the Raspberry Pi IS the price because most of the OSS you can install and use in your Raspberry Pi can be installed and used in any regular PC that students may have at home, but can we assume all the students have a computer at home?

My partner works in education and I can tell you that lots of students don't have access to a computer at home. Well, Raspberry Pi price changes everything!