Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Raspberry Pi impressions: the $35 Linux computer and tinker toy

engadget.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–26 of 26 posts

Re: Raspberry Pi impressions: the $35 Linux computer and tinker toy

#21

Post by saulrh »

adrianhoward wrote: post #13
saulrh wrote: post #5

because apparently it's the lack of time spent punching arcane commands into a terminal that has killed interest in computer science Uh, actually. I think that this review is well off, and it really shows here. The command line is simple . Everybody I know learned to program by writing command-line programs. I mean, seriously, int main(){printf("hello world");}. That's incredible for education. Review it as a media c…

The command line is simple. For certain definitions of "simple" :-) I'm one of the people who learned of a simple command line (although on a Sinclair ZX Spectrum - didn't have access to nice little unix boxes in my day). And of course it's a fine and good way to learn how to program. That said - I've seen a few teens take a different route. They got into MySpace. They started wanted to "tweak" things. That got them…

All true. I considered mentioning Excel, GUI builders, HTML, and flash (I'm too young to remember hypercard) but couldn't fit it into the post without rambling. That said, nearly everybody ends up at the command line eventually. Javascript error console, learning a second language, building a daemon or a library, what have you. Having started on GUI builders myself and stalled until I moved to the command line, I think that other paradigms are good for catching new programmers' attention, but the command line is where you really learn what's going on, and you have a slightly better time if you start out there.

  (child or parent)
The target that matters is probably the high school classroom. $35 (or $100 if you include a monitor) is small enough to be covered by a bog-standard lab fee. They can't send a desktop home with every student - too bulky, wouldn't be homogeneous, even recycles are too expensive - but you can hand them all rpis.

Re: Raspberry Pi impressions: the $35 Linux computer and tinker toy

#22

Post by adrianhoward »

tluyben2 wrote: post #15
adrianhoward wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The command line is simple. For certain definitions of "simple" :-) I'm one of the people who learned of a simple command line (although on a Sinclair ZX Spectrum - didn't have access to nice little unix boxes in my day). And of course it's a fine and good way to learn how to program. That said - I've seen a few teens take a different route. They got into MySpace. They started wanted to "tweak" things. That got them…

Well the command line is simple, however it looks daunting at first. Even among non-programmers (like my wife); after they managed to get over their initial fear of 'learning all those difficult commands' and such, they start to loath GUIs for a lot of things.

Well the command line is simple, however it looks daunting at first

As I said - for certain definitions of "simple". For example

* Looks "daunting at first" means it doesn't meet simple if you're talking about approachability or initial ease of use

* Command lines if fantastic for many operations (piping is wonderful in Unix land, moving a stack of files based on a regex, etc. - all much quicker to do in command line land once you know what you're doing). So it meets simple for "easy when you know how".

* Selecting and moving a set of randomly named files - probably slower than with a GUI. (Doesn't meet "simple" for tasks where you can't leverage the command line advantages much).

* I really miss the pre-OS X Finder when I could have a single physical layout for my files and WIP. Made me stupidly productive.... even when I was just using my Mac as a chubby-client to my Linux box).

I loath GUIs for some tasks. Love 'em for others. s/GUI/command-line/ and the same applies :-)

It's just using words like "simple" without qualifiers raises my UX hackles (which are equally raised when GUI fans use words like "intuitive"). It's more nuanced than that.

Re: Raspberry Pi impressions: the $35 Linux computer and tinker toy

#23

Post by oylenshpeegul »

I like how it said this

    In fact, simply launching Engadget was enough to pin the CPU and
    bring the OS to a standstill for at least a few minutes.
with no apparent irony or shame. I mean, some might take that as a sign that their website could benefit from some attention.

Re: Raspberry Pi impressions: the $35 Linux computer and tinker toy

#24

Post by adrianhoward »

saulrh wrote: post #21
adrianhoward wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The command line is simple. For certain definitions of "simple" :-) I'm one of the people who learned of a simple command line (although on a Sinclair ZX Spectrum - didn't have access to nice little unix boxes in my day). And of course it's a fine and good way to learn how to program. That said - I've seen a few teens take a different route. They got into MySpace. They started wanted to "tweak" things. That got them…

All true. I considered mentioning Excel, GUI builders, HTML, and flash (I'm too young to remember hypercard) but couldn't fit it into the post without rambling. That said, nearly everybody ends up at the command line eventually. Javascript error console, learning a second language, building a daemon or a library, what have you. Having started on GUI builders myself and stalled until I moved to the command line, I thi…

The target that matters is probably the high school classroom. $35 (or $100 if you include a monitor) is small enough to be covered by a bog-standard lab fee. They can't send a desktop home with every student - too bulky, wouldn't be homogeneous, even recycles are too expensive - but you can hand them all rpis.

Hmm... I guess that makes sense. I'm probably thinking about it from the UK perspective where I don't think it'll have that same impact. At $35 per-student still seems like an awful lot of cash per-student to me if the rants teacher friends give me about getting current text books, etc. are anything to go by.

Let me put it another way. I think there are a bunch of folk who remember getting into development because of small, cheap computers with a simple command line interface. They look around today and don't see those machines, and think that adding them back will produce an influx of new developers.

But the world is different now. Back then computers were "new". Back then people were buying those boxes as "the home computer". For games and word processing and finance as well as "programming" (in 99% of cases they were never used for writing or financials - but they were sold that way :-) I'm going to be surprised if the raspi has anything like the impact that the early Sinclair computers had in the UK for example.

I still hope I'll be surprised though :-)

Re: Raspberry Pi impressions: the $35 Linux computer and tinker toy

#25

Post by anigbrowl »

oylenshpeegul wrote: post #23

I like how it said this In fact, simply launching Engadget was enough to pin the CPU and bring the OS to a standstill for at least a few minutes. with no apparent irony or shame. I mean, some might take that as a sign that their website could benefit from some attention.

I thought the exact same thing. Engadget is a blog, it ought to be lightweight.

Re: Raspberry Pi impressions: the $35 Linux computer and tinker toy

#26

Post by TapaJob »

linker3000 wrote: post #20
TapaJob wrote: post #4

For newbies, here's a guide i uploaded yesterday: http://moishtech.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/setup-and-run-asteri...

I already have Asterisk/FreePBX running on my Pi and had setup an RPi Wiki page ready for some notes, but work was curtailed due to hospitalization so would you consider popping in some something, or a link, from your excellent guide. I was just working on getting DAHDI going to support conferencing and see how the board coped with that - did you get that far?

Sure no problem, not familiar with the RPi Wiki, drop me an email at tapajob at gmail dot com with the details.
Post reply on HN