I hope that this is the restart of the under $200 PC era. I also hope that young boys and girls are provided real tools to program these things out of the box. Thinking about it, a new version of BASIC might not be such a bad thing, but that might just be nostalgia for my Atari 400 8-bit BASIC cartridge.
I was actually pretty disappointed with the "beginner" workflow for the Raspberry Pi, which is essentially "run this linux distribution, which has some educational applications pre-installed once you fire up X". Not to knock linux, but based on the stated mission of the RPi, I would have thought something more similar to the traditional 80's experience of "boot & start programming" would have been the out-of-the-box default.
I've actually been mulling over starting a project like this for machines like the RPi and APC -- an OS where you basically boot into something like a REPL, and start coding away.
You could just remove X/desktop from any Linux distro and be right where you want to be-a shell which can all command line programs and you can program it via one liners or scripts.
Couldn't you have it boot into something like Squeak running on the framebuffer? http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/3484 discusses this for the x86, but with no Raspberry Pi in my possession (I haven't been able to order one yet - busy with other projects).
Well, that was supposed to be the banner that RaspberryPi was flying. Except everyone seems to be busy building XBMC and MAME boxes out of it, and not much visible work on how to make it friendly as a beginner's programming tool.
I'm nostalgic for the old 8-bit BASIC too, but primarily because you could switch the thing on and the interpreter was in ROM and ready to go a few seconds after powering on.
> The Colour Maximite is a small and versatile single chip computer running a full featured BASIC interpreter with 128K of working memory and eight colours on a VGA monitor.
> It will work with a standard PC keyboard and because the Maximite has its own built in SD memory card and BASIC language you need nothing more to start writing and running BASIC programs.
> The Colour Maximite also has 40 input/output lines including an Arduino compatible connector. These I/Os can be independently configured as analog inputs, digital inputs or digital outputs. You can measure voltage, frequencies, detect switch closure, etc and respond by turning on lights, closing relays, etc - all under control of your BASIC program.
"I'm nostalgic for the old 8-bit BASIC too, but primarily because you could switch the thing on and the interpreter was in ROM and ready to go a few seconds after powering on."
The immediacy is something lacking in current IDEs and ease of start. Turn on, type, and something happens.
I'm still hopeful I'll see an under $200 programmable computing device sold somewhere. Perhaps if OLPC is actually serious about selling at Walmart[1], it will happen.
I dunno if there's a need for basic when there is so much easy functionality other places. When I started in the 80s, it was on my Commadore 64 and interesting to use, and a lot more straightforward than pascal or c when I was 10.
But there are a lot of good tools without creating anything new. IMO, the real places for improvement are learning methods.
My own idea has been to get my boy to start learning javascript via codecademy. We're seeing how that goes.
He's 11 and more interested in minecraft (which, IMO, has a similar set of activities such as wikis and researching via message boards as my own day-to-day why-doesn't-this-work programming issues), but we'll see how this goes.
The other thing that I did was to put together a desktop from parts with him over the holidays, which was a bit more fun than our usual yearly giant lego build, and I hope will give him an idea that these machines aren't magic-- they are put together, even if I don't have the skills to convey that at the circuit level.
"The other thing that I did was to put together a desktop from parts with him over the holidays, which was a bit more fun than our usual yearly giant lego build, and I hope will give him an idea that these machines aren't magic-- they are put together, even if I don't have the skills to convey that at the circuit level."
How much did it cost to build? I would wager it was more than $200. To put together a PC is beyond a lot of parents skill.
I bet you could boot one into an Apple II or C64 emulator fairly quickly. My little one actually finds some of the older games, like "The Pond" and "The Factory" more engaging than the much more polished modern educational stuff. Now I just need to find a 9" monitor with HDMI input.
