Pi advice - not Pie...

[Yellow Fang]

Also worth considering, especially if you want to encourage your son to tinker with stuff, are Arduino micro-processor boards. They are quite easy to program. They have some sort of C-like integrated development environment. You can program them to read temperature sensors, light up LEDs, things like that. There are various routines and electronic circuit designs that people have uploaded to various websites.

TBH tinkering with Arduino's used to be better, but it has all got a little tatty imo. There are too many variants of the Arduino. The support documentation for many devices is very poor. The software libraries get out of date and inconsistent.

My problem with the Pi, is that I regarded it as a small home computer, but as a home computer, it is crap. It was painfully slow. It did not have enough memory or power. I hope the later versions are better. I heard say that the I/O pins were not robust, although I am not sure whether they meant electronically or physically. In either case, it meant making a bit more circuitry before you could make the Pi interact with devices. All this adds up in cost. In the end I used it to download YouTube videos and play them through my sound system.

BTW, I don't think Python is a joke language. People use it at my workplace, although it is not intended for complex software.

Raspberry Pi Geek magazine has a lot of projects. Some of them are pretty advanced. If your son can get those to work then he is doing well.

 

[marknotgeorge]

Also worth considering, especially if you want to encourage your son to tinker with stuff, are Arduino micro-processor boards. They are quite easy to program. They have some sort of C-like integrated development environment. You can program them to read temperature sensors, light up LEDs, things like that. There are various routines and electronic circuit designs that people have uploaded to various websites.

TBH tinkering with Arduino's used to be better, but it has all got a little tatty imo. There are too many variants of the Arduino. The support documentation for many devices is very poor. The software libraries get out of date and inconsistent.

My problem with the Pi, is that I regarded it as a small home computer, but as a home computer, it is crap. It was painfully slow. It did not have enough memory or power. I hope the later versions are better. I heard say that the I/O pins were not robust, although I am not sure whether they meant electronically or physically. In either case, it meant making a bit more circuitry before you could make the Pi interact with devices. All this adds up in cost. In the end I used it to download YouTube videos and play them through my sound system.

BTW, I don't think Python is a joke language. People use it at my workplace, although it is not intended for complex software.

Raspberry Pi Geek magazine has a lot of projects. Some of them are pretty advanced. If your son can get those to work then he is doing well.

Raspberry Pis and Arduinos complement each other - there are some things that each does so much better than the other. The good thing is that it's relatively simple to get them to talk to each other.

 

[marknotgeorge]

Despite your misgivings, Python is one of the favoured programming languages for schools along with Scratch. Their popularity arises from the level of support available and the numerous books that address programming in schools. They also happen to be the languages that feature in initial teacher training and in service training for ICT teachers who have never programmed - many of the existing ICT teachers have transferred from other school subjects such as science and mathematics to address the ICT staffing shortage when ICT became a core subject.

When 'Javascript is Fun', 'VB Without Tears' and 'The Joy of Macros' are published and feature in the best sellers' lists then there might be hope for their use in the computer classroom.

To be honest, the indentation to denote blocks of code thing is the only thing I've a problem with in Python. It does strike me as one of those hair-shirty, make things just a little bit harder than necessary things that Linux is full of, though.

 

[Milkfloat]

I work for a large technology company and my team uses Python most days, there is a time and a place for a lot of languages and we believe in using the right tool for the right job.

 

[MartinQ]

http://planet.farnell.com/email/cpc/WebOffers/Dec09_15.htm?&CMP=e-email-091215-RPi-here

Popped up today, the buggy looks quite good fun.

 

[Tin Pot]

To be honest, the indentation to denote blocks of code thing is the only thing I've a problem with in Python. It does strike me as one of those hair-shirty, make things just a little bit harder than necessary things that Linux is full of, though.

That's as good a description of Linux as I've heard!