Raspberri Pi

Yay … got delivery of my Raspberry-Pi today.

In case you’ve been off planet for a while … “The Raspberry-Pi is a credit-card sized computer that plugs into your TV and a keyboard. It’s a capable little PC which can be used for many of the things that your desktop PC does, like spreadsheets, word-processing and games. It also plays high-definition video.”

The Raspberry Pi was inspired to try to teach kids in the UK programming skills. The founders of the project, Eben Upton and his colleagues at the University of Cambridge’s Computer Laboratory, became concerned about the year-on-year decline in the numbers and skills levels of the A Level students applying to read Computer Science at the University

Like me, these guys first computer, was a BBC Micro, and Eben says that he owes everything he has now to the people who made that machine. I have to agree … I loved that machine to death .. I spent hours and hours (sometimes whole nights) programming in BBC basic, writing games software, software to deal with tidal predictions around Guernsey, mathematical calculation software and just about anything I could think of … I even invented my own Software Company … “Ammonite Software” … complete with graphical logo whenever I loaded one of the games I’d written to play… aaah I could wax nostaligic about my old BBC Micro for days! 😀

My BBC Micro-B definately got me into software development for which I’m eternally grateful … coz it’s still my hobby .. and I get paid for it too !!!

So if Raspberry-Pi can do the same thing for the current generation of would be software developers that can only be a very good thing.