Re:Raspberry Pi reveals the final PCB design for the $25 PC
by JamesAn on Tuesday November 15, 2011 @02:43PM
(#3239806)
One of the operating systems that may be ported to the Pi is RISC OS, which includes a reasonably decent implementation of BASIC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_BASIC) which itself contains a built-in ARM assembler.
A student could quickly and easily start writing graphical programs (plotting randomly coloured circles onscreen, for example) or simple games, without needing to download, install and use a compiler.
We're literally returning to the world of 10 PRINT "Hello" : 20 GOTO 10... in the good "very accessible programming" sense, not the bad "...considered harmful" sense.
But there's a tiny[1] hint of regret that modern programming is necessarily abstracted away from the hardware. When people were using the popular home computers of the 1980s they would be able to use some version of BASIC, and then also some machine code if needed. And that wasn't something just limited to the brightest smartest young programmers; it was above average but nothing extreme. I learnt Z80 ASM on a suitcase instructional computer, turning fans on and off or stepping through traffic light sequences on LEDs. Then I made a resistor ladder DtoA convertor and pushed data out the parallel printer port for audio. (Something also done by No$GB emulator.)
That seems to be something that children will be missing out on, unless this project gives them enough boost to then investigate things like arduino or similar.
[1] Not a criticism in any way of the Raspberry Pi project.