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Eben Upton Muses on the Raspberry Pi, Scratch and, His Love For Parallela
super_rancid writes "In a 7,000 word interview with Raspberry Pi's founder posted on TuxRadar.com, Eben Upton talks about the challenges of managing such a successful project, what may be in the Raspberry Pi mark 2, and why he wishes he'd backed the Parallela Kickstarter."
On interesting answer: "We were thinking of booting into Python or booting into Scratch. For younger kids, boot into Scratch. Have an environment where it’s Linux underneath, boots into Scratch and hold down a key at a particular point during boot and it doesn’t boot into Scratch it just drops into the prompt. So you can play with Scratch for six months, once you’re happy with Scratch you turn over the page and 'Hold down F1 during boot,' and it’s like 'Oh look - it’s a PC!' So I think that’s something we’d really like to do."
Not enough room on the SoC, apparently. 512 MB is the max that will fit, without a complete redesign (which no-one wants to do, not enough value in it).
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In the back of your mind, you havenâ(TM)t got Raspberry Pi 2?
No, not Pi 2. It must obviously be named 2 Pi.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
...how useless and overhyped the Pi is today - and has been since more than a year back - when compared to the some of the so much more capable "Android sticks" that cost not much more. Yes, everyone knows that the Pi has a composite video output and a dedicated ethernet output, but that's not what it all comes down to, especially since most of the "Android sticks" come with 2 (or more) USB ports and Wi-Fi these days. What are his thoughts on offering the barely usable amount of 256/512 MB of RAM and just a single CPU core (spreading applications across multiple cores for smoother multitasking is the gain here, not eventual software that threads) when there are $35 "Android sticks" that come with 1 GB of RAM and two CPU cores that are even clocked higher?
When I first read about the Raspberry Pi I was excited because I thought they were going to recreate this boot to a BASIC interpreter-type of experience we used to have on Apple II's and TRS-80's and the like. That's the sort of experience that they claimed inspired the raspberry pi, and they claimed that sort of programming-based, learning-intensive experience was what they wanted the pi to be about.
So, I was very disappointed to see that by default, a raspberry pi really is "just a pc" that boots into your typical CLI, and the "getting started" instructions actually have the new user start up X right off the bat. Providing scratch and a python IDE are nice and all, but I feel like all the normal trappings of "just a pc" take focus away from the real point of the pi.
I'd rather use a 1$ AVR.
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Something like this should boot in python, with split screen, half of the screen for turtle graphics (yes python includes turtle graphics in its standard library).
Then we have something like the LOGO environment of old.
While running a long piece of code it should full screen the turtle graphics, with using ESC to terminate the run and return back to split screen.
However it's really good at doing things that use the GPU, it's a lot more stable and faster than the alternatives at that price point. A single core 700MHz CPU with 256/512MB RAM and 128MB of VRAM was all we had a couple of years ago and we did really well with it. Sure you won't drive the most modern accelerated GUIs with it but a static, usable GUI works pretty well.
Disclaimer: I have developed a professional embedded advertisement system on the RPi with currently about 50 Pi's deployed.
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More RAM is utterly pointless. The slow CPU can hardly make good use of what's already there. Even with 2GB, it would still not become a usable desktop system.
Hello Mr. Monoculture.
Your MP3-player doesn't even have 256MB ram. Does that make it pointless to add more since it won't turn into a usable desktop system if you do?
The Pi was never meant to be a desktop system or even a media player. Just because a lot of hobbyists picked it up as a cheap replacement for HTPCs or the gazillion different ARM developer cards doesn't mean that 2GB ram would be pointless for its intended purpose.
It have been clear from the start that the Pi is intended to be an educational toy to teach children how computers work. The step to boot into a programming language will make sure that the kids of today will have the same opportunity to learn that todays programmers had when they were young.
So, you are among those that use it outside of its intended modes of operation. That is great since it increases the market for the device but it feels a bit too much to use arguments that indicate that anything that doesn't turn the Pi into a desktop system is pointless.
hmm, just had a look, and from the examples it looks like processing is all written code. I don't think my 8 year old is ready to start learning about syntax. Scratch is extremely visual, as in the actual code is invisible to the user. They build their programs with colored blocks that snap together. It's really done well as far as getting kids to start thinking logically. I'd like to see it expanded so they can continue to develop more advanced projects. Switching them to pure code isn't really an option at this point.
Why would you subject anyone to that
Time to move up to Alice [http://www.alice.org/]. My kid was using Scratch for a while and got bored (hit a wall). Just found Alice and plan to install and go through the tutorials with her this weekend.
No wonder you are posting that drivel as anon. Those USB sticks are terribly under-powered, I have a $99 one lying in a drawer as it couldn't handle playing back non-H264 video. There is no way they can handle the kind of uses I hear the Pi is being used for. Even high bit-rate video make the thing blisteringly hot to the touch.
And Android is poor for a general purpose educational device. You can't drop straight into C, Python, etc. You can get some hacks but they are no substitute. As an educational tool, Android is a very bad joke.
The Pi is a great device at a great price, but please keep Android the hell away from it.
Phillip.
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You listed an Android tablet and two Android sticks. I think you missed the part where he said "as good as Pi", since none of those fit that criteria.
What you should have said was BeagleBone Black, $45:
http://beagleboard.org/Products/BeagleBone%20Black
Why not a redesign? What's so great about the current one?
It was cheap! Someone else already paid for all the relatively expensive SoC development work on it. Wasn't a large order of SoC chips originally canceled by a large customer of Broadcom. So this is a contributing factor to making the Raspberry Pi fly. Maybe this is a myth I read but I've always believe this to be the story.
Now of course we can have this (RaspberryPi Mk1 A/B) level of specification/performance cheaper if we build / design something new today, but everyone today expects more, as your posting explains. So the problem is confining the project to the project goals.
Good on Ben for doing a grand job of that.