26 Feb
2013
26 Feb
'13
3:33 p.m.
On 26 February 2013 22:44, Jules Richardson
<jules.richardson99 at gmail.com> wrote:
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile
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On 02/26/2013 02:24 PM, Tony Duell wrote:
If you wanted to get a teenager interested in car mechanics, would you
give them an late-19th-century Daimler-Benz ?
I mean, it's mechanically simple!
No, of course you wouldn't, because it's an antique. It's barely able
to chug along a road at all and it complies with no modern road-safety
standards - it doesn't even have a steering wheel, it has a tiller.
No, you would want something that had a steering wheel, the usual stop
and go pedals, indicators and headlights and so on - something that
actually resembled a car.
That being so, would you give them a huge 1950s sedan? I mean, they're
simpler than modern cars.
No, because it's huge and heavy and complicated to run compared to a
modern car where you put petrol in and it goes for a year without
maintenance. Also, along with all the maintenance and the fact that
it's huge and intimidating, if you have one that still works, it might
be a collectible vintage item; if it's not old enough to be vintage,
it's probably still worth money.
No, you'd give them a little modern compact car, maybe not this year's
latest model, one from a few years ago - small, basic, safe,
roadworthy and familiar and resembling other vehicles they might
encounter. A runabout, something cheap and simple and disposable.
In this extended metaphor, being roadworthy means being usable on the
Web. That is what 21st century computers are /for/, that is their
purpose in existence. Being roadworthy means being able to run
Firefox, say - some standard browser and other fairly standard
software.
Having conventional controls - a steering wheel etc. - means having a
GUI, being worked with a mouse and so on.
You are debating which model of 1890s horseless carriage would be most
suitable, when to an impartial outside observer, all of them are
utterly irrelevant.
To a child born in the developed world this century, the Web is part
of life, always there at megabit speeds, as ubiq
If you are prepeared to use a microprocessor, then get a BBC micro. I've
yet to se a better educational machine. Seriously.
Yes, they are pretty flexible (and reasonably hard to kill!). The 380Z
wasn't bad either, although not quite in the same league. I'm not sure what
a good equivalent this side of the Pond would be - maybe an Apple II as long
as it came with a few useful cards? But I do wonder jhsut who the Rpi is aimed at.
Given that you need a PC
and its peripherals (keyboard, mouse, monitor) to use the Rpi, I wonder
if it wouldn't be simpler jsut to install a free C compiler on said PC,
at least to learn programming.
Absolutely. I suspect for many people it appeals because it's a cheap
computer, and they don't really have a particular use in mind for it (so it
doesn't matter that it's rather middle-ground for so many situations).
cheers
Jules