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Why the Raspberry Pi Zero Isn't a Practical Tool For Teaching Students (hackaday.com)
An anonymous reader writes: This article criticizes the Raspberry PI Foundation's new computer the Zero. It points out that the Foundation says the purpose of the new Pi is to reach students but with all the needed equipment and experience it is ill suited for students. From the Hackaday story: "For development you need to set up the Zero with a power supply, mini-HDMI to HDMI adapter, HDMI cable, the USB OTG cable, USB hub, a keyboard, and possibly a mouse. After some hours of work you’re ready to try the software in your device. The cables are all disconnected and the board connected to the device. Tests are run. You pull the Zero out and plug everything back together for further software work. That’s going to get old really fast so you get a second Zero so one can stay in the device. Now all you need to do is swap the SD card. If you’re going to do that, you don’t need a second Zero since you can use a Pi 2 and get the advantages of its higher speed in development. Alternatively, you can use the USB OTG with a WiFi dongle, copy files to the Zero’s SD, and restart or reboot the device. Over WiFi you can also use SSH or a remote console to monitor the device’s activities. How long did it take you to figure out all the cable connections in the second paragraph above? Do you think a student without a hacker friend will understand that? Remember, the goal is to reach students who don’t know computers."
How long did it take you to figure out all the cable connections in the second paragraph above?
There was only one paragraph.
Slashdot's formatting protocol strips out the paragraph breaks in article submissions.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
It depends what kind of person you are. If you are starting from zero, then yes, all of those accessories are going to add up to more than $5. However, that's not really the target market for the Pi Zero. The Pi Zero user is someone comfortable with soldering on headers they need and already has a USB power brick (probably from an old phone/tablet/etc...), USB cables, the correct HDMI cables, and even a spare USB keyboard and micro-SD card. Or maybe they have to buy the HDMI cable but the have everything else already. That's the kind of person the Pi Zero is best for. People in the former group are probably better served by "full size" RPis or other similar SBCs.
I read the internet for the articles.
I've never understood the hype of the Raspberry Pi because the Pi is only a computer, not a full computer system. After you buy all the other components you need and piece them all together, you've spent way over $25! If you want a cheap, easy to learn computer system, make it a ZX80-type system with everything included but a monitor, then provide a TV connection. It would suck on an old low-definition TV, but on a typical TV these days it could look great.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
your kvetching about the use of the word paragraph is kind of meaningless here.
Two things.
... oh, what's the word ... starts with "e" ... eat? No, edit! Yeah, that thing that editors do! He could have chosen to edit the summary before pasting it. I know that is a foreign concept for slashdot employees, who are too busy looking for future jobs to do the jobs they currently have.
First, he didn't need to paste that sentence, it had no value at all. Samzenpus could have failed a little less by doing a little
Second, as others have pointed out, if he posted multiple paragraphs the breaks would have been lost by the craptacular code that runs this site. This is a problem that has existed here for over a decade now...
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
The value of a $5 computer is embedded project development.
Indeed. The Raspberry Pi is not very good for teaching general programming. A "real" computer is better for that. But it is great for teaching kids how to do hardware and embedded system hackery. I volunteer in an after-school robotics program, and we use Raspberry Pis to blink LEDs, and create intelligent sensors that can be interfaced to Lego Mindstorms. Right now, we are using the $35 devices, but if we can get them for $5, then each kid can have their own, we don't have to worry too much about them getting fried, and the kids can build permanent dedicated devices, rather than taking them apart to recycle for the next project.
To save others the time and effort I went through looking this up, "sideways RAM" was a term used by BBC Micro to refer to bank switchable RAM.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun