“The best way for kids to learn to be hackers is on their hardware, free from school or parental controls“
That's why I think the Raspberry Pi et al are so important, they're disposable yet fully capable pieces of hardware that kids can hack on.
That's why I think the Raspberry Pi et al are so important, they're disposable yet fully capable pieces of hardware that kids can hack on.
The Linux command line and the permissions system are incredibly unfriendly to adults, never mind kids. Have you tried to set up a web server with PHP on a Pi? It makes no concessions at all to beginners. You might as well be setting up Ubuntu Server LTS - only it doesn't give you any clues about security.
I'd be more interested in something that updated the experience of the old 8-bit micros, which dropped you straight into a simplified programming environment, and gave you a path to bare-metal machine code if you wanted to take it.
Maybe something like a Python IDE, with a way through to Linux for expert users, but with basic extras - a web server, a mail server, a VPS that could connect to other Pi users, a few other options - pre-installed and ready to go?
There's something to be said for those old machines. Basic was a good learning intro and assembly is still valid today. I remember Logo too.. I'm just chomping at the bit when my kids are old enough to dust off the C-64 and start diving in.
The other default, raspbian, has a game programming environment on the desktop.
Though hackernews usually just runs stories on the pi being used for 'smart mirrors' and emulation stations.
He faced a problem one time where his Python program wouldn't execute, and I unfortunately had to explain to him what shebang lines do, how to use them, the UNIX executable bit, etc.
The Raspberry Pi is indeed not as educational as it is made out to be. It may have been envisioned as a tool for classrooms, but in practice the Pi is just a toy for hackers. It's not like it was ever going to do much for the classroom anyway. Instead of spending $40 to teach a kid to program using Linux on a Pi, you could spend $0 to teach them to program using Linux in a virtual machine.