> is to have a device that a kid can accidentally nuke

To be honest the large majority of RPi users I have ever met are only adults. Are there a lot of kids who are using it out there?

We would like the RPi more for education, but the cost is still a factor. Due to cost, the school need to buy these, as by itself the RPi is useless; It needed a keyboard, mouse, screen, etc.

Students bring their own SD card, since else they are easily misplaced (stolen). This also means boards can be used by any student.

A lot of effort and cost, so we went with the microbit. The kids can easily own them, use a tablet to program them, and for the kids that are older, they can go for the rPi to expand this setup and learn more advanced stuff. By we do not use this as an entry. Kids that do robotics have a better time with them.

So yes, maybe mostly used by adults. The idea of SD cards was a good one. But several flaws held it back; like the non-5v tolerant GPIO. Lost several boards due to misuse... And they ain't cheap if they need to be replaced often.

Actually, yes. They're even good in a classroom because even if a kid screws one up, it's not hard to teach a public school teacher how to re-image an SD card.

You dont hear about it as often because for reasons, the kids aren't exactly encouraged to reach out to adults on the internet. Dogs on the internet and all that.

You sir, must have never played the IT guy to this teacher you speak of in our public school system. I challenge the “easy” assertion with great confidence.

/meant humorously but also seriously serious.

Do adults meet a lot of kids without adults present though? This seems like a bit of observer bias.

Yep. Kids don't tend to blog. Maybe brag, but still in a different scenario ;-)

eMMC isn't mutually exclusive with having an SD card slot.

Even if they removed the SD slot, you would still reflash the board over USB. That's how it's done with the Raspberry Pi Compute Module. With some software development it could be even easier than fiddling with SD cards.

In education environments, microSD cards tend to disappear a lot. Having one less moving piece to lose would be a win.

And having flashed cards ready to hand over is a win. "Factory reset" in the time it takes to swap a card. Your point? The Pi (apart from the CM) is for kids. It happens to be useful to other people as well, but that is not, was not, and never will be the aim of the Foundation.

It is when they have to build the thing for <$25 though.

Misplaced cards happen, but it does allow easier sharing of the boards.