In my morning news feed, I came across this great BBC interview with Linus Torvalds. One of my favorite things about Torvalds has always been his ability to grasp and succinctly explain technology in a wider social context. When asked here for his feelings on the Raspberry Pi, he does not disappoint:
The recent launch of the Raspberry Pi, running on Linux, has attracted a lot of attention. Are you hopeful it will inspire another generation of programmers who can contribute to the Linux kernel?
So I personally come from a “tinkering with computers” background, and yes, as a result I find things like Raspberry Pi to be an important thing: trying to make it possible for a wider group of people to tinker with computers and just playing around.
And making the computers cheap enough that you really can not only afford the hardware at a big scale, but perhaps more important, also “afford failure”.
By that I mean that I suspect a lot of them will go to kids who play with them a bit, but then decide that they just can’t care.
But that’s OK. If it’s cheap enough, you can afford to have a lot of “don’t cares” if then every once in a while you end up triggering even a fairly rare “do care” case.
So I actually think that if you make these kinds of platforms cheap enough – really “throw-away cheap” in a sense – the fact that you can be wasteful can be a good thing, if it means that you will reach a few kids you wouldn’t otherwise have reached.
Nailed it.
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
Python for Microcontrollers — Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: MicroPython Pico W Bluetooth, CircuitPython 8.0.4 and much more! #CircuitPython #Python #micropython @ThePSF @Raspberry_Pi
No DON’T dispose of them… I’ll be more than happy to take your Rasberry Pi’s if you don’t want them.