csmithuk

However, with none of that I think I'd have done the same thing.

Now there was a gap for me but I have children now and they are learning how to write HTML and basic JavaScript. They are using software to produce video productions and stop-frame animations, they are even getting instruction from parents on how to write python. They have Windows desktops, iPads and a few Linux netbooks. They have it pretty good.

And this is a London primary school with an Ofsted "needs improvement" rating.

It's not all that bad.

"Dad: is this what your job is about?"

It's not and never has been.

The perfect Apple 2 / C64 (or in my case, BBC Model B) was the one that you opened the box, plugged it in and it worked the moment you turned it on without fail, every time and never poked you in the eye unless you told it to.

I still think the (partial inspiration for the Pi) i.e. the BBC Micro is still a better starting point than the Pi itself. Well documented, relatively simple, very powerful, forgiving and the ability to write high level (basic) or low level code (assembly) from the get go from the books that came with it, can play games on it and if you screw anything up, just restart it.

However they're just the foundations on which you teach. Programming languages, tools and software packages are the important bits. Which OS doesn't matter really. Neither does any red vs blue pill selection.

Most of my knowledge is applicable to any platform as it's fairly generic. I avoid specialisation for this reason.

I can sit down on any machine and be productive straight away regardless of if it's open source or a feudal empire. That's what we should be teaching.

I agreed about the Raspberry Pi being the best device for education right from day one. That was until my father bought my daughter one for her birthday and I ended up being the resident "fix it guru" for it.

The thing teaches you merely how to jump through funny shaped hoops to get something working rather than anything realistic or helpful. Most of it is google-fu and copy and paste. When you do finally get there it's a baron land of absolutely unrealistic, undocumented crud that can't self-serve. Plus it barely works and browns out to start with resulting in USB-hub jiggery-pokery (and that only happens because I actually understand how USB works).

For ref, I have 20 years' of Unix and Linux experience (right down to writing kernel drivers) and it was painful getting it off the ground so I'm not approaching it blind.

Being critical (constructively!) of this results in the RPI forum thread being deleted which in itself an affront and a general recommendation against the things.

MacOS should be a part of School Education!

It's primitive tribalism. People should learn "computing" as part of a school education as over life things are going to change and they're going to need to adapt.

Acer knock out some good machines. I miss their Timeline series. I got 12 hours out of one of them once and it was super-cheap.

It's no Triniton to make a comparison.

I've had zero experience with other smart TVs so this might be the best user experience out there -- please feel free to confirm this or not as I was thinking about getting rid of it.

Use of EL in a product is usually reason enough to step away from the company.

Having worked in that sector, the interesting shit is always what you haven't heard about.

Like the last 50 decades at least...

If you look at the CLR there are only two major current versions: 2.0 and 4.0 and perfect legacy compat and wide support across all windows server versions.

Came stuffed with crapware and Sony-isms from the start. Did a rebuild with clean windows. Couldn't find any drivers for any of the Sony proprietary crap (Sony firmware extension parser, Magic Gate, WTF etc) so left them off as it worked fine.

After about 2 months the external PSU blew up. Sony couldn't provide a replacement under warranty for over 6 weeks so I got a dodgy Chinese PSU from Ali Express (took 2 days to arrive!). About 2 months later it started overheating and turning off randomly. Took it to bits to try and clean it and noticed that half the screws on the stand were no longer screwed in - all the threads were stripped. The stand collapsed shortly after resulting it being crudely propped on a pile of books. Turns out there was no dirt in the cooling ducts at all. Took the HSF off the CPU and there was only thermal paste on half of it. Sorted it with some arctic silver. About a month later the disk blew up. Turns out it was from a known bad batch of WD disks. Stuck a new disk in it. A month later it completely failed.

Total piece of junk. It lives in my cupboard as a reminder never to buy anything Sony and as a source of a mouse and keyboard for my daughter's Raspberry Pi. Even the keyboard and mouse suck.

ThinkPad user before and afterwards. ZERO problems ever.

It stinks but it stinks consistently!

Hardware isn't upgraded. It's replaced when it fails. It's easier to get hardware off the shelf that is certified for Windows Server (any version!). This is particularly true on the tail end of a product lifecycle.

The OS upgrades in Linux are usually utterly painful (Debian included). If you go with CentOS/RH, you have to do this every 5 years at average due to the API churn in Linux distributions[1]. You need to get your developers on there ASAP. With Service Packs and Java updates, a simple test cycle will suffice as they don't break the API contracts. They promise this and deliver.

[1] The kernel syscall interface is fine but major versions of Apache, glibc and compilers and anything even vaguely related to client-side stuff is a PITA.

Google/Facebook mean social and crudely document shaped data. Wikipedia means data that looks like encylopedia pages.

Microsoft mean ANY data you want to shift with the same languages and tools across all platform form factors which is why people buy into the ecosystem. Even going back to 2004, I could knock out an app (in C++/C#) that worked on the desktop, on the web and on mobile devices. In fact I did and it's still in use today managing private couriers with minimal code changes.

With respect to support you get a very narrow configuration of supported software and hardware with RH. Keeping it rolling isn't as easy as it looks. The developer support is awful as well. Documentation is shitty,you're tied to C++/JDK versions that are ancient etc. Also no MSDN, no partner support (which is pretty awesome). My few dealings with RedHat support have left us without a solution.

For ref - platforms: Exchange, Windows Server, IIS, SQL Server (the latter I've got an installation that has been cleanly upgraded since 1996 though TWO versions)

Times change. Google's core business doesn't.

Whilst I rather like FreeBSD, when I have to throw an architecture together that will survive over a decade, Microsoft wins every time. They're the only company which provides certainty. RedHat are close but their support sucks.

This is rather naive. In certain circles yes but by far the majority of people use just their search.

Ultimately this is probably because experienced people got better offers elsewhere.

It's my job to look at dysfunctional teams both from a technology and a process perspective. I've seen teams like this many times before. They are expensive, inefficient and the return is considerably lower than the investment has promised.

Just because the historic approaches are worse doesn't exclude these guys from scrutiny. They'll quite happily piss £40k of dev cost up the wall while other departments are arguing over £200 ultrasounds for cancer patients. Scrutiny must be universal and unforgiving.

There are many more. I'll write them up at some point.