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Comment by mietek | Hacker News Reader

16 KB of memory?

The “64” in “Commodore 64”, the name of a computer introduced in 1982, stands for 64 KB of memory. (A 128 KB version followed 3 years later.) It is now 35 years since 1982…

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Instead of lambasting it for a low number, perhaps you could tell us what you'd have a child do in 17KB that they couldn't do in 16KB?

It's an educational device, and that education involves learning to write pieces of code for which industry users may well prefer to pull in large libraries. I'd be surprised if the target audience - 12-13 year olds - use all that; those that have a passion for it will of course end up using more expensive devices with bigger numbers. Those that don't will continue doing only compulsory exercises that could probably manage with less than 16KB.

Quoting from the fine article, which you clearly have not read:

“Finally, the micro:bit’s 16 kB of RAM is quite limiting, at least when using the MicroPython runtime. While writing a moderate-size program I managed to repeatedly exhaust the SoC’s memory, resulting in difficult to debug MemoryExceptions. I can easily imagine intermediate users running up against and being confused by this limitation, and would welcome a version of the micro:bit with double the RAM.”

> the fine article, which you clearly have not read

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> " ... easily imagine intermediate users running up against ... "

Something tells me the author isn't imagining the 12-13 year-old target audience when writing 'intermediate users'. There's nothing wrong with reviewing it from a different audience's perspective of course, but it doesn't do to ignore it if you're going to complain about the device's specification.

The Commodore 64 was also $595 when it was introduced, which, adjusted for inflation, is about $1500. The microbit, on the other hand, is about $20. The microbit also has 256k of flash memory -- in comparison, the 170k 1541 floppy drive cost $400, or $1000 in today's dollars. One also needs to keep in mind that programs can run directly from that flash memory, so that 16k is only really a limitation if you're using python, which won't run on the c64. Furthermore, the microbit has features, like bluetooth and a pair of sensors for movement, that you could only dream of when the c64 was introduced. So yes, the c64 had more volatile ram. The microbit has more of pretty much everything else.

As zitterbewegung writes elsewhere in this thread, “there is a Bluetooth radio on the microbit but the runtime was 12k and there wasn't enough space to load micropython and Bluetooth at the same time.”

In 1982, when I bought my BBC micro it was 2000 guilders + another 1650 for the disk drives and yet another 1000 or so for a solidisk RAM expansion. Back then that was about half the price of a small brand new car. I had to save like Scrooge in order to be able to afford that machine and the first year was spent mostly waiting for my cassettes to load or save because once I bought the machine I could not afford the drives.

Compare that to the price of this beauty and you see what 35 years of progress can bring you.

To be fair, the British government didn't give a Commodore 64 to every British child for free.

If only! I could have played Granny's Garden at home then.

Perhaps, if they did, Silicon Valley would be in the UK.

The UK still had a hangover from the 1970s at the time, local phones calls cost money, and Americans have always been a lot richer anyway. I suspect America had the inherent advantage here.

> Americans have always been a lot richer

Not always. I do recognize the economic sacrifice the UK made for the sake of winning WWII. It's a beautiful thing - altruism on a national scale.

They did put a BBC Micro in every school though.

So that means that they distributed, what, two or three orders of magnitude more micro:bits?

Yes - there are about 160 kids per year group in my school, and I think all year 7's got one (for themselves, not the school)

The BBC Micros probably cost more.

The BBC Micro cost £400 in 1981, which was £1400 in 2016, according to the Bank of England. I don't know if this includes monitors, presumably it doesn't include any software. From the other comment, you can double the price to add disc drives etc.

So, at least £400 for every 25 children. My primary school had one in every classroom, but I don't know if that was the standard, so it could be less.

A 10-pack of Micro:Bits with basic accessories come to £11 each, £275 for 25 children.

Not every child - every Year-7 (11-12 year old) child, whose school had a teacher interested enough to apply for them.

My child's DT teacher did, but they used it for one lesson, then were given it to bring home. It's now in a drawer somewhere.

That was last year. I haven't heard of any plans to repeat the exercise.

As I understand it, it was not the DT teacher -- the government gave one to every year 7 child for themselves to keep and use however they wish. This is nice in a way but the teachers at my school bemoaned that they couldn't really use them in the class, since the students could not really be counted on to bring them in when required. If you think that the school would benefit from them, then contact the PTA or the school governers and get them to ask parents to donate unused micro:bits to the school?

Incorrect: https://community.tes.com/threads/the-micro-bit-school-regis...

It's got 256KBytes of ROM. If that's memory-mapped, the 16KBytes of RAM is much less of a limitation. Most data and virtually all code - especially on ARM - is read-only.

Python might not be the easiest way of working with this setup though...

16KB is plenty for most tasks handled by a low power microcontroller.

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