When I last wrote about the Raspberry Pi I assumed it was an idea that would probably never see the light of day, that it would encounter too many insurmountable hurdles or be forced to make too many compromises, or that it would succumb to market forces and the price would be forced too high. Not so it seems.

The Pi is a good idea. It won’t revolutionise computer science in schools on its own, or overnight, but at least it will provide a cheap computer for those who want to tinker, and we used to be a nation of tinkerers, we’re just moving from sheds to the bedroom. Interestingly, it seems to be compared to the BBC Micro, which spawned a lot of early computer adoption in the UK. What everyone fails to remember is that the Micro wasn’t cheap.

The [BBC Micro] Model A and the Model B were initially priced at £235 and £335 respectively, but rising almost immediately to £299 and £399 due to increased costs.

Those prices equate to £900 or more in 2012 money, any child with that budget could buy a computer these days. Its success was probably the combination of the TV show, adoption in schools and the fact that it was simple to use yet flexible and powerful.  I supposed you could argue it was cheap by the standards of the day, when most computers ran to many thousands.

What I’m more interested in is how the Pi seems to be anticipated by those of us way too old to be considered their target market and why something like this hasn’t been released before. The closest I’ve seen so far have been the so-called plug PCs (because they’re built into a plug) which are generally less capable than the Pi (no display connector for a start). They also cost closer to £100.

What the Pi offers is something I’ve mooted for a while, the chance of ubiquitous computing power. How a charity has managed to pull together this sort of design at this price (they did get a special deal it seems), when the electronics giants haven’t, makes you wonder. I’m sure many of those same companies are watching eagerly.

I wonder if, and hope, the Pi creates a great many things, with a device so capable at so low a cost, it could be incorporated into a vast number of devices to make them more than just the limited things we have, from heater controls, to alarm clocks, to home automation. The low power on the devices (it can run from 4 AA batteries and the beta models draw 2-4 watts) means always on computing becomes very affordable.  You only have to look at all the homebrew projects for devices like the NSLU2, Linksys routers and the various NAS devices around to see the potential.

To that end, while I still have some hope, Microsoft’s adoption of the ARM platform could be promising, but they seem to be crippling it (get all apps working on it, Microsoft, otherwise you’re wasting a massive advantage), if they release it as a separate product to install at all.  It’s not essential to the success of the Pi, but I think it might help it bridge into the mainstream.

It’ll be interesting to see if it has an impact on Linux and Python adoption for future projects.

While the Pi is designed to help kids get their hands on computers and have a play, I think the most interesting thing is how it will be used by the rest of the community and just what blossoms from it.  It’s not just a computer, it’s a platform.

So with the announcement of OnLive’s service offering access to full copies of Windows and Office in the cloud (video), from the iPad initially, but any device going forward, are Microsoft looking at another potential cloud strategy besides Office Web Apps and Azure?

I’ve already had several people try and sell me ‘desktop virtualisation’ in a business environment.  I’ve already mentioned how I think it will come to the home environment (and Cringley’s already doing it — side note, I wish he’d write about more stuff like that).

It means Microsoft would become completely platform independent and even if people start to opt for Apples, or Chromebooks or whatever.  It’s even a potential for service providers, who could start offering cheap thin clients to customers with access to Windows for a monthly fee (maybe an extra service for ISPs).  The customer never has to worry about upgrading, or hardware failing, or viruses (they could keep a full image as a back-up, which means near-instant restores).  This isn’t a new idea I grant you.

But with that in mind, I wonder if Microsoft might buy any company who can help deliver remote sessions over DSL and 3G, the likes of Critrix, which I’ve heard decribed as a bolt-on for RDP which improves network efficiency so it can run over slow connections.

Reading the comments in a BBC article about open source software, there’s the suggestion that public section IT doesn’t know what it’s doing and that private sector is so much better, so much more efficient.  Well research doesn’t support that:

Until now, large-scale software failures have been most associated with the public sector. In 2007, a European Services Strategies Unit report identified 105 UK public sector contracts with substantial cost overruns.

However, Professor Flyvbjerg believes these problems apply equally to private firms.

“People always thought that the public sector was doing worse in IT than private companies – our findings suggest they’re just as bad.

“We think government IT contracts get more attention, whereas the private sector can hide its details,” he said.

I’ve worked in IT in both sectors and, frankly, there’s little difference, aside from some additional security implications.  Let’s not forget that most public sector IT contracts (and, at least when I was there, much of the day-to-day stuff) are run by private companies/contractors.  I’ve heard suggestions that the public sector provisioning provides a lack of definition, last minute changes to scope and all manner of other hindrances that cause delays and add time, which costs money. Continue reading →

I don’t know much about what goes on in education, I’ve been out of it a long while and don’t have kids to drag my attention back to it, but I’ve seen two fairly recent articles belittling the state of computer lessons (or Information and Communications Technology, ICT, as it’s more commonly known) which make me wonder.

One was about David Braben, perhaps best known for co-writing the computer game Elite back in the 1980s (you can read a great excerpt from Backroom Boys by Francis Spufford which explains what an achievement this was), who plans to launch a computer for £15 to encourage people to ‘tinker’ with code.

The second is about the UK’s special effects industry, an area where we’re a world leader, but which is having trouble finding skilled people so is having to draft them in from overseas.  They both lament what is taught in ICT.

“The level of IT that they teach [in schools] is ridiculous,” said Lee Danskin, Escape Studios’ training development director.

“It is like, ‘here’s Powerpoint, here’s Excel and here’s Word’. ICT lessons are just pushing packages around rather than coding or programming.”

Braben thinks the same thing:

They believe that what today’s schoolchildren learn in ICT classes leaves them uninspired and ignorant about the way computers work. David Braben says the way the subject is taught today reminds him of typing lessons when he was at school – useful perhaps in preparing pupils for office jobs, but no way to encourage creativity.

I don’t think that’s changed much, looking back I probably did do some BASIC at school, mainly to control Lego motors on a BBC Micro in CDT, along with the practice of typing up code from magazines into whatever computer we had at home (my parents were pretty tech-savvy, we had computers from a fairly young age) but I didn’t really start coding (with Pascal on the Acorn Archimedes, which shows you how old I am) until I did my A-Levels.  Most of my subsequent coding skills have been self-taught, picked up by reading how-to guides online and through trial and error.

Which probably explains the importance of Braben’s project, a small machine that anyone can afford and which allows you to have a go at producing something.  I’d argue an internet connection was important too, so you can make use of the tons of online guides and advice, ask questions on forums, etc.

In a world that is increasingly governed by computers, the importance of which is only going to increase, as is the reliance on them to create wealth, more programming skills are needed.  Even writing search terms now seems to be becoming a programming language, let alone writing formulas in Excel and with more and more data stored in databases how long before we all have to speak SQL?

Computers can just be used for what an application lets you do, but they’re so much more powerful and useful when you can through together a few lines of code to make them dance to your tune.

Update (4th June 2010): The BBC’s Click programme has some more details, including interviews with Peter Braben, Ian Livingston and teacher Ian Addison.