“..which is that any kid who wants to program (or even experiment with logic gates and simulators) can do this on their mobile phone these days.”

It’s been years since I have done this, but I am fairly certain that you never have, if you think simulators = the real thing.

Secondly, what’s your point again? I look at the usb computer that runs a light weight Linux, that can be programmed to do a lot of stuff. It could potentially be an excellent learning tool, and God knows what else.

You on the other hand just seem jelly that they didn’t use Windows CE. :)

He said simulators ON their mobile phones. He’s referring to the fact that many phones are more powerful than the computer in the article. What’s more, the phone can make calls.

@BASSBOY:

I am going to assume that you are faintly coherent and open to discussion. (Discussion means that I might very well be wrong. I might even be proposing something as the basis for otherwise neutral argument.)

First: simulators. There’s a hell of a lot of them. For actual didactic purposes, I’d love to see something that gets kids used to this:http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/mmix.html.

And you are absolutely correct. I have never experimented with logic gates on a mobile phone (I’ll give you Android here, on the assumption that we don’t wish to brick the kid’s phone).

I’d assume there’s an app for that. If not, why not? Fsck me, I could write one of those over a weekend. And, more to my point, it would have an instant audience of tens of thousands for free. Not for fifteen quid.

I’m just trying to understand your objection here. Let’s see:

“simulators == the real thing?”

(I took the liberty of correcting your typo to the correct mathematical symbol — I can’t be bothered to look the symbol up in HTML, but in PHP it’s '===,’ and rightly so.)

It would be a fscking useless learning tool.

Who on earth would teach to it? What is it supposed to teach?

Why not use an actual computer with actual simulation software?

It might have escaped your notice (not that you are capable of noticing), but it is still possible to program assembler on a Mac or a Windows machine.

Or, failing that, if you really want to deal with embedded software (which is what this Heap’o'Fail represents), there’s always VxWorks and I think a free student version of QNX and God knows what else.

Do you seriously want to cripple bright kids?

Are simulators the real thing?

Discuss, class.

I’ll raise your “fairly certain” with a challenge.

I can combine basic logic units to produce an appropriate approximation of a Taylor power series.

I don’t particularly wish to do this, but I’ve been educated to do it.

Have you ever been educated?

Touch the sky, kid.

@MAY 6, 2011 8:07 PM:

OK. I’m going to answer this honestly.

It’s a total waste of time, isn’t it?

And not only that, but there is such a thing as, blech, I am about to quote Wikipedia here without even checking, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost.

Or, in proper English, not to say Human —

A total fscking waste of time. Even at fifteen quid a pop.

“He said simulators ON their mobile phones. He’s referring to the fact that many phones are more powerful than the computer in the article. What’s more, the phone can make calls.”

Okay, point understood and accepted. I thought he was talking about simulating logic gates was as good as the real thing.
However, in a place other than USA and Western Europe, how many kids are going to able to afford an Android?

@Dr.Losers first three replies:
Nice, condescending strawmen(?) I won’t even bother replying to those. It is however interesting that you seem make the assumption, that a Linux user is uneducated.

@Dr.Losers last reply:
What exactly is the opportunity cost according to you? And as I mention in my reply to TMR, it is not exactly a “total fscking waste of time”.

Which reply to TMR?

I maintain that it is an opportunity cost because there are better ways of learning computers-as-a-hobby (if you will) out there. At the extreme end you could play with the Knuth simulator. At the basic end you could play with Lego mindstorms.

In between, you could write an app on iOS (if your parents have the money, I agree), or on Android (since you’ll probably have a portable phone).

You could learn Python and write a web site. (It doesn’t even have to be a public one.) Hell, you could buy a breadboard for pennies and solder stuff together.

The only thing a Raspberry Pi is going to get you, apart from grief from your little sister every time she wants to watch the TV, is knowledge of grep and find and probably grub or lilo and maybe a little C/C++.

You’ll spend so much time dicking around with the arcane features of Linux that it will, in fact, be an enormous Opportunity Cost Sink. And what does it provide that you can’t get elsewhere? Bog all.

I’ll accept the possible argument for “Third World” kids, which is an interesting point. Even that’s a bit patronising, though. It’s the Third World, not the Stone Age.

I am fairly sure that, although not uneducated (did I remotely imply that you are?), you are ignorant, and possibly so by self-will … if you think that logical argument + examples == strawmen.

Thinking about it, even the Third World argument doesn’t hold up (and I think this is where the Negroponte initiative, splendid as it is, is doomed).

In order to use the Raspberry Pi at all, you need a television set. (And of course a keyboard, not mentioned in the article. And a WiFi connection would be nice … but oops, it’s a stripped down version of Linux.)

In the Third World (it’s a hand-wavy phrase. Feel free to substitute), this is not a value proposition. Interestingly, in the Third World, mobile phones are almost a requirement for daily life. Mobile phones come with (some sort of) keyboard, and (some sort of) internet access, or at least a means of communicating with somebody who has that access.

I’d go with the app(s) on the mobile phone, myself. It’s also future-proofing the concept. Today it’s a logic gate simulator; tomorrow it might be a supercomputer in the clouds. Or something else.

One of my main beefs with the Raspberry Pi is that “ideas men” generally speaking have rotten ideas, cooked up while fighting yesterday’s wars.

“In order to use the Raspberry Pi at all, you need a television set.”

An HDMI-compatible TV, actually. Sounds cheap.

Not seeing how this would change anything, as people who visit school forms that would come at all in question for studying CS are made up of a broad majority of upper class people. The percentage of possible targets is low, and the effectivity sounds so also.

It does sound like a cool gadget though, but completely misses the point. Once Windows 8 for ARM is out, I’d even consider buying such a thing. Just totally useless for now.