Mission Bit: Non-profit in SF teaching kids how to code in after-school classes | Hacker News Reader

Mission Bit: Non-profit in SF teaching kids how to code in after-school classes

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Why are they asking for Macbooks? Is there some particular need for OSX? Why not just throw them onto Linux, if they're going to learn an operating system it might as well be something they don't have to shell out 1000+ for a computer for.

If only there were some sort of cheap computer that is very bare bones and small. One that can hook up to TVs by HDMI or RCA so the kids could use them at home. Have it cost around fifty dollars (with case and power adapter), and get people to donate extra keyboards and mice. If only.

We've generally gone with Macs because most of the tech companies around here have Macs can donate them as they roll out their old computers giving all the students a similar development environment. That being said we could make it work with other computers :)

That piece of gear is called a Raspberry Pi. It's what my 12 year old is mainly hacking on.

But Raspberry Pi is ARMv6 architecture, which makes installing certain software complicated or impossible. You can't install Ubuntu on it, for example, as Ubuntu only supports ARMv7+.

Better option IMO are the $199 Chromebooks Codestarter puts Ubuntu on: http://blog.codestarter.org/post/93985346780/how-we-turn-199...

You can buy 5 Raspberry Pis for every 1 Chromebook. It may not be better but it's much cheaper.

In my opinion, I think a second hand mac is going to be much better than a brand new Pi for a child to learn on...

You'd also benefit from having a somewhat similar hardware system rather than having a multiple of different laptops with different specs, ports etc.

> You can buy 5 Raspberry Pis for every 1 Chromebook

Not really though. Once you add the SD card, case, and USB power supply, you're at at least $80 (I know because I own one and that's what I had to buy).

Once you add the keyboard, mouse, and monitor to be on parity with the Chromebook you'll be lucky to be under $200.

The one advantage is that the pis are likely cheap enough that the kid can take them with them. I assume most of them have a TV at home, and a mouse and keyboard can be found free or under ten bucks.

That said Chromebooks would likely be the better answer then Raspi or Macbooks.

Is there any particular reason for Ubuntu?

The reason I sarcastically suggested Raspis is because this is literally what they were meant for.

Mostly it's my preference, but it seems like major software projects usually have an easy install path for Ubuntu (oftentimes a custom PPA, which is an Ubuntu-specific feature). But if Ubuntu is supported, Debian oftentimes is as well, so Raspbian would probably be fine.

My bigger concern would be the ARM architecture / switch off x86 in general. Even getting Crashplan (a Java program) working was a PITA due to that.

I teach coding to inner city junior and senior highschool kids in Los Angeles. Buying computers was a non-starter for our organization, so we're making do with old Windows machines, which are easy to get a hold of. This is what most of our kids have if they have a computer at home or a laptop they can bring with them.

For the beginning class, we use Chrome, a text editor, and a lightweight web server app ("Mongoose"), and we learn basic code concepts in JavaScript. Setup time is minimal and anything we do in class the kids can do at home on whatever computer they have access to. For the intermediate class, we install Virtual Box and everyone gets a copy of the same Ubuntu virtual machine image, whether the host machine is Mac or Windows, and we learn Linux and Ruby (it could just as easily be Python). We're looking at Cloud 9 IDE as another potential solution, one that would be completely install-free.

In fact, the only laptop a student's brought so far that we couldn't make use of was a Chromebook.

> Why are they asking for Macbooks?

Because no true developer would write code on anything else /s

Mission Bit doesn't have permanent classrooms. All of the equipment needs to be portable and standalone, so laptops are a requirement. Small HDMI computers such as Raspberry Pi are no longer cheap once you start looking at adding a keyboard, mouse and display.

We standardize on Mac to keep the experience as uniform as possible. A huge issue that few people consider is that if you have a fleet of mismatched laptops you're going to spend a lot of time and/or storage space sorting out which power supply goes to what and it's going to take a lot longer to build a single image that's going to work well for all of them (regardless of OS).

We're doing a pilot class with Chromebooks this semester, but we have to buy most of those ourselves. We've found that it's often easier to get a donation of an old Mac laptop than ~$220.

You must offer young recruits three things: Good Training, Good Wages and Good Employment conditions.

They must have something to believe in, and to have hope for the future.

When I was a young bloke (Australia) the Tech schools offered great training courses, the employers were lined up on graduation day, and life-time employment was taken for granted.

These days, no one trains, the wages are ludicrous, and permanent employment is unheard of.

And yet employers complain that they can't get good engineers.

HUGE proponent of constant learning, if you don't invest in your employees why would you expect them to stay.

I love this! As somebody who's started programming when he was 9, I have been looking for ways to reach younger people for years now. So far I have not been very successful.

Back home I organise javascript meetups and bloody hell, I can't even get college students majoring in CS to attend. We manage to get a couple seniors and such here and there, but freshmen might as well be unicorns.

But I digress. All I wanted to say was that I love this and I wish you all the best. Getting good youth support is important for any field that doesn't want to die.

If you ever want to talk strategies on this email us! brian@missionbit.com

While we're at it, why I have to remove "blog." prefix from browser's address bar in order to get to your company page?

We did a subdomain because our blog is hosted on tumblr, so we have to point a specific address at it. Sorry about that!

Actually, many company blogs have this problem. What I meant is that why not have some company logo in the header which points to the company website?

I think it's a great article with an excellent idea but the title is misleading.

We changed the title to a sentence from the article in an attempt to address this (submitted title was "An Unusual Way to Recruit Engineers").

It'd be nice if more opportunities like this existed outside Silicon Valley.

We'd love to work with you on building this out! I'm from Detroit so I completely agree. Email brian@missionbit.com :)

This is spectacular! What a great way to give something back.

Wow this is awesome, I'd defintiely like to volunteer

This comment and a couple others in this thread caused people to complain to us about shillage on HN.

This sounds like a great program for kids and we wish it all the best, but HN users are hyper-allergic to the tiniest traces of astroturfing and its byproducts. For best results—including not getting downvoted, flamed, or complained about to HN moderators—you're best off just letting the content speak for itself. Good luck!

respect!

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