28 Feb
2013
28 Feb
'13
11:38 a.m.
On 2/27/2013 2:35 PM, Tony Duell wrote:
Actually, I am not sure I do. Mainly becuase I have no idea what sort of
exchange I am linked to.
Don;t you fidn it odd that 99.9% of such people
don;'t ahve a clue as to
what they are doing, and necer will.
99.9% of the people I know have no idea what
happens once the take a
phone off the hook, and talk into it. They don't care. People who are using computers like the Pi vs. ones like PC's and
laptops are going to
follow. They just use them and don't care how they work. That is why
500,000 (if that is accurate) are already sold. I don't think there are
half a million people who plan to learn how the arm chip is interfaced
thru the 3v gpio. they want to hook it to a tv ,keybard, etc. and just
use it.
I thought the Rpi was intneded ot give people some udnerstnading of what
goes on inside, to let them program, let them do simple hardware hacking
(turnign on LEDs, etc).
I feel everybody should learn to program. Not becuase they will get a job
programming, but because it teaches them how to analyse a problem. That
is a very valuable skill
I also feel that it is a bad idea to use thigns you do not understnad.
This does nto necessarily mean knowing every last detail of the insides.
An example is a spreadsheet. It is very easy to get nonsensical results
from a spreadsheet. Not because you mistpye the
equations, or don;t
understand how the cell references work. But something more
fundamental.
Becuasse you don't understand concepts like rounding errors,
convergeance, etc. IMHO if you are going to use a spreadsheet you need to
understnad this.
It has been said that now that calcualtors are everywhere, kids do not
need to leanr how to do long multiplication and division. I am nto sure I
accept that (given that long multiplciaton and division have applciations
in manipulating agebraic expresions too). But I am convinced that if you
are goign to assume that clacualtors are everywhere you should teach kids
why said calculators do not always give the right answers and how to
avoid such problems.
-tony