On Tue, May 21, 2013 at 02:03:42AM -0000, Cory Smelosky wrote:
[RPi]
 I really don't know.  Once I got mine I became far,
far less excited.  Now
it's just been relegated to running on the UPS doing nothing but serving a MOP
image for a DECserver. 
I'm afraid these things could give a whole crop of kids totally the wrong
idea about what embedded programming is.  Using a familiar platform is neat
because it means you can start from knowledge you already have but running a
full-blown timesharing OS just to control a few blinkenlights or whatever is
morally wrong.
There are other cheap SBCs that are a better fit to simple things, and anyway
thanks to 
oshpark.com (and until recently 
batchpcb.com -- but at this point,
good riddance!) etc. it's really not so expensive to make small custom PCBs
any more.  Saving the wiring/effort it would have taken to adapt the SBC to
your application is worth *something* so the custom route may not even cost
extra.
John