Kids Programming

[mystery]

If he likes eating burgers independently, he may be more tempted than you think by raspberry pie.

[pheasantchick]

What age is Raspberry Pi aimed at?

[Amber]

RP is jolly hard to get hold of - my sons both got up at some stupid hour to try and order it once and it had all sold out.

I would love a holiday or out of school course in programming too, but being MacPeople we would want Unix. Annoyingly, I was trained in Unix programming myself once, and chucked out all my manuals before I realised that DS2 was programmed for programming. I reckon there is a gap in the market here - not all kids love computer games (mine are not even remotely interested in X boxes or playstations) but some love trying to get right into computers and there isn't really anything out there for them.

[daveg]

RP is jolly hard to get hold of - my sons both got up at some stupid hour to try and order it once and it had all sold out.

RS have them on about four-week lead time now.

I would love a holiday or out of school course in programming too, but being MacPeople we would want Unix.

There's no shortage of programming environments that you could install, most of them free, most of them close enough to their inferior Windows cousins that the same courses and documentation would apply.

[Amber]

Daveg, how does one 'install a programming environment'? Don't want to play the dumb girl card, but I am lost.

I was kind of meaning that a course where one interacted with other geeks, sorry, like-minded individuals, would be good, rather than something one did alone in one's bedroom, privately, but you sound like a man who knows, so if you are willing, please give me some more information.

By pm if it's more appropriate.

[mystery]

Best post I've ever read on EPE Amber, but surprised it got passed the mods.

[stroudydad]

Does anyone have any thoughts about Raspberry Pi? Ds wants one, we have no clue...

[sbarnes]

They are £90 in maplins in the high street

[TigerMum]

Yes, apparently Pis are very fun... for my DH at least. I don't really know what you can "do" with one, but our primary has got hold of 2 of them and are planning to do something with them in their Code Club (which my DH helps to run one day after school). I think you can hook up a monitor & program on it, make lights flash etc. but my interest fades at this point...

A deluxe starter kit can be around £90, if you don't need that, they can be bought (pi only) for under £30.

[new2me]

Bought one for DS1 last Christmas. As he only ever used it under duress, and only as long as we remained in the room, we passed it on to DS3. DS3's interested flickered and died. He wanted to run Scratch but it was too slow for that. Now it gathers dust.