> The idea behind a tiny and cheap computer for kids came in 2006, when Eben Upton, Rob Mullins, Jack Lang and Alan Mycroft, based at the University of Cambridge’s Computer Laboratory, became concerned about the year-on-year decline in the numbers and skills levels of the A Level students applying to read Computer Science. From a situation in the 1990s where most of the kids applying were coming to interview as experienced hobbyist programmers, the landscape in the 2000s was very different; a typical applicant might only have done a little web design.
I joined at about that time and found it noticeable that having experience with C++ and a few other languages marked me out as more advanced than many of the other students.
Also relevant to this discussion is that in the first term we learnt ML, a functional language. This was partially because of advantages in talking about algorithms in it, but also to put everyone on a level playing field and introduce something that even keener students won't have encountered before. We did Java later, which I found much less rewarding.
Also Larry Paulson is a legend.
Also, I once heard that Larry Paulson stopped going to a certain college's annual computer science dinner because he was hit with a pineapple during a food fight. Bastards.
However, I went to a pretty poor University (ranked ~60th), I have no doubt that the numbers are very different in the top universities.
Further evidence is the four class intro sequence steadily had fewer sections (of the same size) with each passing term