Tidbits on Java Programmers and Apple Announcement

Training the Next Generation of RPGers
 
We just finished delivering the second part of an introductory RPG class to the group of Java programmers that we mentioned in our "Programming Highs and Tire Lows" blog entry back in July. To say that we're brain dead is to put it mildly! Teaching these young, enthusiastic programmers really kept us on our toes, but it was a joy nonetheless. Hopefully we'll be doing a lot more of this kind of training in the future.

New iPhones and More

We admit to being Mac junkies but, although we both also use iPhones, we weren't exactly on the edge of our seats waiting for this week's announcements because we don't have any plans to replace our phones any time soon. We both also use FitBits, so even the much rumored iWatch, or as we now know it to be the Apple Watch, didn't hold as much interest for us as it otherwise might.

So in a way we were expecting this announcement to be somewhat anti-climatic. After all, anticipation has been building for so long that even Apple was going to be hard pressed to meet expectations. And yet it did. And we can't help but feel that in many ways it exceeded them. Both of the new iPhone models raise the game yet again in almost every category from form factor to appearance to speed to battery life to. ... And the Apple Watch--wow, that is one beautiful looking piece of technology. Pity we have to wait until 2015 to get our hands on one or that might have taken care of our Christmas shopping FitBit or no. Well, probably not. We learned a long time ago that being first in line for any new technology is risky and we usually wait a while, but darn it, that Dick Tracey watch phone notion is mighty tempting.

We know before we even finish this that the Apple haters and Android fan boys will be all over this piece. So be it. Apple rarely disappoints and we were very impressed by what we saw this week.

Whether the Apple Watch can define a whole new market in the way the iPhone and iPad did remains to be seen, but they sure look great!

OCEAN Views

Last week we spoke at the OCEAN User Group's annual conference in Costa Mesa in (normally) sunny California. It was great to see that like several other IBM i events lately, their numbers were up from previous years at the main event. They also had excellent attendance at the dinner and keynote session, featuring Alison Butterill talking about modernization and at a pre-conference workshop on Ruby for IBM i.

This year the group also tried out the idea of running in-depth workshops including hands-on Labs on the Saturday after the main event. We taught an introductory RDi class, IBM's Dan Cruikshank taught SQL topics including IBM Data Studio and Larry Bolhuis taught systems management. We're told that there were approximately 100 attendees at the workshops, which means that 100 people gave up part of their weekend to learn--and that is really encouraging.

OCEAN is a great group and if you live in reach of the Orange County, California-area you should definitely be a member.

OCEAN works with a local technical university to host the main conference and the workshops (the keynote and dinner were held at a hotel to accommodate larger numbers in a single session). We've mentioned this idea of using colleges for conferences before. It really can be a practical solution for local user groups that have considered doing events but found hosting them in hotels expensive and inflexible. In fact it does seem to be a bit of a trend with TUG, our local Toronto user group, holding its TEC event at a local college. We have heard that the OMNI group is working on a similar idea for an upcoming event in the Chicago area.

Other Items

In last week's blog we mentioned punch cards in what reader Bob L. considered a derogatory fashion:

"Don't belittle the punched card. Its legacy lives on: after all, that is why you still have to remind those "young young" programmers that the code must start on or after column 8 and end at column 80!!"

We certainly didn't mean to belittle the punch card (except for maybe those silly little 96 column things) they were really useful for writing notes. Jon remembers that in his early days of presenting, notes on punch cards were a godsend because their very size forced you to keep to bullet points so you were never tempted to just read your presentation. These days he couldn't do that even if he could find a supply as he so rarely wears a jacket to keep them in.

Before we go wanted to thank those readers of our recent article on tools to help you trace program execution, "Tracing Our Steps," who pointed out alternative tools. We haven't had a chance to check them all out yet but we will do so and report back in the article comments and also here in the blog.

We actually get to spend the next two weeks at home, which will be a rare treat this summer. Who knows? Maybe one or two chores around the house might even get done!

Technology and Age

Jon has long been a fan of Douglas Adams (author of all five parts of the Hitchhiker's trilogy) and he recently came across a quote from Adams' "The Salmon of Doubt" relating to technology:

I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:

1. Anything that is in the world when you're born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.

2. Anything that's invented between when you're fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.

3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.

The older we get, the more true this seems to be!

The age of 35 may be a little low, especially for IT professionals, because our jobs tend to force us to be a bit more open to new technologies. Although when you consider the number of RPGers still writing in RPG III (albeit in RPG IV fixed form syntax) perhaps not that low. Certainly the older we get, the tougher it seems to be to imagine how (or sometimes even why) we should take advantage of some technologies that cross our paths. For example, we've puzzled over the value of LinkedIn and Jon has even had a rant about automation in public bathrooms.

But challenging as it may be, it's critical to our own futures and that of our beloved IBM i, that we not allow this tendency to keep us completely in our comfortable stage 3 world without exploring all the new technologies that may at first glance seem "against the natural order of things." Google's proposed self-driving cars are an example where we have seen many friends throw up their hands in horror at the very idea.

We're not just talking about "green screens" here (but if the shoe fits ...). Change just for change's sake is not worthwhile, but sometimes maybe we just need to look a little harder at the advantages.

As an example, Jon worked on a webcast recently with the folks at Lansa and was impressed with the native phone/tablet integration of their LongRange mobile tool targeted to RPGers. It often takes seeing a few examples before we catch on to things like how an integrated camera or GPS and mapping software on a handheld device can be integrated into business processes to dramatically improve RPG-based applications. Perhaps those under 35 inherently understand how the use of such technologies can make life and business easier for our users. Us older folk take a little longer.

This reminds us of another point we've made in "Give the Kids a Chance" and "Educating New RPGers." On several occasions, we've suggested that too many IBM i shops waste time searching for experienced IBM i and RPG staff--sometimes even considering moving off the platform because of an inability to find them. As we've suggested before, you really should focus on finding good, creative and energetic business-oriented developers, regardless of the language or platform they currently have experience on or indeed whether they have much experience at all. Teaching those folks IBM i and RPG (the modern, free-format version) is a piece of cake and you may be surprised how many of them love both the platform and the language.

That doesn't necessarily mean they will be young. There are creative and energetic developers over 35 out there looking for work as well. Some may even have RPG and IBM i experience! But if they do happen to fit within Adams' magic 35-year-old boundary, they may bring the added benefit that they more naturally understand how to harness technology to improve business applications.

By the way, we only mention Lansa because we've worked with the company recently but many other IBM i mobile solution providers offer great products--some of which may be a better solution for your own particular situation. It's the idea, not the specific product, we're talking about. We welcome comments on mobile solutions your shop has used or is considering.

Too Old to Learn?

2014 is here and it’s a “big birthday” year for both of us. Jon is counting the days to his 65th birthday and Susan can’t be too cruel in her birthday celebration plans poking fun at his age since she turns 60 a few weeks later. We confess to spending a fair bit of energy lately looking at the possibility of retirement - calculating how and when is the optimum time to begin collecting retirement income from various sources.

But one thing we’re not doing is thinking about is stopping - or even slowing down - on learning new things. Learning is fun - that’s what we always told our kids, right? Does that change just because we’re older? It doesn’t matter much what we’re learning - whether it’s programming languages or tools or dancing or yoga. Jon has been having tons of fun with his Arduino that he received for Christmas from a friend who understands (and shares) his thirst for learning.

One of the more frustrating aspects of our jobs when we’re teaching on-site classes is dealing with those who seem to feel they are too old to learn how to code differently or how to use a new tool to edit their code. Some of them actually tell us they are too old or they have just done it the old way for so long, they can’t change. At that point, Jon especially loves to challenge them to an age comparison - “I’ll bet you’re not older than me. If I can learn it, you can too.” Others don’t actually voice the sentiment but seem resistant to the new tools and techniques and often bring up at some point during our days there that they are looking forward to their retirement in a few months.

Hey - we’re looking forward to our retirement as well. But that doesn’t reduce our enthusiasm to learn new things. Learning is never “wasted.” So what if you’re planning to retire in six months or a year? Does that mean you’re wasting your energy learning to write more effective code using techniques or languages that didn’t exist decades ago when you started or that you should continue to use a toolset to edit your code that slows you down?

The very process of learning and doing new things enhances your ability to continue to learn other new things. So look at it this way. Learn how to use RSE (and its related tools) to write your code or learn to write subprocedures called as functions instead of subroutines or learn to write more readable free format code - even if you only have a few months left in your coding career to use them. Why? Because you want to keep your brain in shape while you’re working for however many months or years that may be so that you’ll be ready to learn more about golfing, sailing, bird watching, gardening or whatever it is you want to do in your retirement. And continuing to learn has been shown to keep Alzheimer’s disease from striking.

Now, don’t get us started on the number of students we see in their forties who also seem to feel they cannot or should not learn something new. It’s not always the oldest students in our classes that resist change. That’s even more frustrating and a story for another day - assuming we can think if something constructive to say about it, that is.

 

 

Eating the Elephant

 

At conferences, during classes and often in our email there's one statement/question that we get asked over and over: "I know I've let my skills get rusty, I know there's a huge list of things I should learn, but where do I start? It is all so overwhelming."

It is a good question, but the answer is really quite simple. When faced with the task of eating an elephant there is only one way to deal with it--one bite at a time.

But there's a problem with that basic premise. With an elephant, of course, there are at least some obvious potential starting points. Nibble your way up from the tail, or gnaw your way from the tip of the trunk, just for starters. With the type of list most of the questioners are faced with, however, the choices are not quite so obvious. SQL, XML, Web services, mobile apps, HTML, CSS, Javascript, Ruby, etc. Where to start?

To an extent it depends on where you are right now, and whether your current job is steering you in a specific direction. Of course if the latter is the case, the answer is probably a lot more obvious. By "where you are right now" we are talking specifically talking about your RPG skills. For example, if you have yet to embrace the use of subprocedures as a way of life-- not just for reusable components but as a vehicle for structuring your programs--then that is clearly an area that you need to address.

But perhaps the choice is actually easier than that? We think we could make an argument that your first step should be to learn a new language. After all, if you haven't got your head around subprocedures yet then perhaps it is because, like many others, you simply can't see the point. You've managed with subroutines and dynamically called programs for years - why bother to change? Our good friend George Farr often recounts that when people tell him how much they enjoyed his "Java for RPG Programmers" book, he frequently asks if they are doing much Java programming. The answer is invariably the same "No, but it made a huge difference to the way I code RPG!"

Java is, of course, a perfectly valid language to learn, as indeed are Ruby (now available for IBM i) and Python among others. But as we've stated many times, we still feel that PHP is the best choice for most RPG programmers. Why? Because you can use it as a procedural language and gently ease your way into object-oriented (OO) programming without have to totally rewire your brain. We know that many reading this will say that learning to program in OO is easy; why the big deal? We're happy for you. We really are. But personally we have not found that to be the case. As Jon has often publicly stated, "I consider myself to be a failed Java programmer." He learned the syntax and can write and read Java code but doesn't _think_ in OO terms. Slowly but surely PHP is helping to remedy that situation. It also also improved his RPG!

Regardless of your choice of language, we want to make one clear cut recommendation. Sign up with Learnable. It is our go-to resource for all new technologies. Learnable offer books and online classes in everything from PHP to Ruby and HTML to Javascript and mobile app development. At $29 a month (or $15 a month if you sign up for a year), it is a bargain basement way to jump start your new skills. That membership gives you access to their entire library plus the ability to download two books a month. Considering most technical books are $40 and up that is worth the price alone. As a minimum sign up for the mailing list where an introductory price of $99 per year is offered from time to time.

So, don't delay: take your first bite!

P.S., while researching the origin of the elephant idea we came upon Mikki's blog and her post on this topic. It has nothing to do with computers, but those of you who feel overwhelmed in your personal lives and professional lives may find it an interesting read.

Mentoring and More

We were particularly pleased to see the comments to our blog two weeks ago on training new RPG programmers. It's always gratifying to know that you are not the only people in the world who think that educating our replacements is a good idea. Maybe some of you want to work forever--not us--we have many things we'd like to do.

Among the comments was one from Torbjörn Appehl who mentioned that in Sweden a company named Tieto had recently undertaken a program to train young recruits in the joys of RPG. We mentioned this story last year in our blog, but at the time didn't know the name of the company, etc. Now, thanks to Torbjörn, we have been able to look at the company's website and we highly recommend you to pay a visit too. This is a company to be watched. If you don't live in one of the countries Tieto serves, you're forgiven for going off and weeping quietly in a corner as you bemoan the state of IT companies in North America and probably elsewhere.

So many companies seem content to simply deal with resource shortages by outsourcing, which is not only a short-term solution, but also one that in our opinion is also shortsighted. Do we really want our children to be the hewers of wood and and drawers of water for the rest of the world because we were not willing to invest in them? On the Tieto website pay attention to the mention of mentoring programs and other similar investments the company makes. Do you know of anyone in North America doing that? Or are most, as we suspect, simply bemoaning the skills shortage, which is not just an IBM i and RPG issue, and doing nothing about it.

This issue is fresh in our minds as it came up during the roundtable discussion that opened the annual WMPCA Spring Conference, which we are attending this week. Present at the meeting were a number of present and former students of our friend Jim Buck, who we mentioned in the earlier blog entry. Some of them described the importance of mentoring and internship programs to their success and how hard such opportunities were to come by. Jim is currently working on ways of extending the reach of his programs and we hope to work with him on that. Something needs to happen.

Another comment on the blog came from Christian in France who works for a French training company that runs introductory IBM i and RPG training two or three times a year for clients whose companies have recruited young programmers. We were particularly pleased to see Christian's comments regarding modern programming practices and tooling.

In part he said: "Of course, we use SQL and free RPG, even if we have to talk about DDS and fixed form RPG. Our tools are system i Navigator and RDP, no choice!..."

"As you can see, it is possible to teach 'IBM i', it's a wonderful system with many advantages that can be interesting for young people, but we have to show them the 'sunny side'."

The "sunny side" indeed Christian! No young programmer in their right mind is going to be interested in RPG II style fixed-format coding and SEU. You'll be lucky if you keep them for a month, even if they are an unpaid intern! Show them modern RPG and RDP and you'll find a very different response.

Thanks also to the others who commented on the blog. We really appreciate your feedback.

Another point that came up during this evening's discussion was that most IBM i programmers aren't just programmers. They're really business analysts that implement the results of their analysis in RPG. This in some ways reinforces the point we made about retraining experienced business people and teaching them how to program. It was the way Jon's father broke into programming and we know many other people whose entry into the world of computing took a similar path. Now if only we could work out a way to make that happen on a large enough scale to make a dent in unemployment levels and the RPG programmer shortage that would be progress!

Educating New RPGers

We had a discussion with a client this week that we've had many times before. It usually starts off with a question about what language they should use for future development--the implication (sometimes stated) is that RPG isn't an option.

Why? Not because it's an old language, not that it can't do the things they need it to do, but because it has become too hard to find RPG programmers. More specifically, it has become even harder to find RPGers who are willing and able to do modern things.

We responded with the same suggestion that we normally do (and we have done here in the blog before. If you can't find RPGers, look for a PHPer (or Java or .Net or a ...) who seems to have a business mindset (vs. wanting to write games or the next Facebook application) and teach them RPG and DB2. If you stick to /Free and other modern RPG practices--at least in the beginning--our experience has been that they not only learn RPG easily, they actually quite like the simplicity of the language. After they are hooked on RPG, then you can (if you must) gradually show them the ancient-style code that you almost certainly still have lying around the shop.

This idea has been used with great success in a number of IBM i shops. However, to our knowledge anyway, they have tended to be relatively large shops where there were a number of people who could share the mentorship role. In this specific case, we're talking about a relatively small shop. So the time commitment to not only teach the RPG language to the newbie but also to mentor them in the intricacies of IBM i, DB2 for i, etc. would require a very signifiant proportion of the shop's developer resources. And that's a problem.

Schools in the the IBM Academic Initiative program rarely seem to teach RPG these days. This is mostly because, as we blogged previously, even when they graduate RPG-literate students, too many potential employers still insist on three to five years' experience. But, even if all of the school programs were as successful in turning out RPG literate graduates as our friend Jim Buck at Gateway Technical College, the time it takes for students to graduate from such programs is longer than some of our clients can wait. They need to build their five-year plans today--before their existing programmers hit retirement age--and they can't build a plan simply based on the vague hope that there will be RPG programmers around to replace those staff.

A dilemma to be sure. What's the answer? We wish we knew, but increasingly we think that this is an area where IBM, perhaps in conjunction with their business partners, needs to take a lead. There are a lot of unemployed folks out there who have extensive business experience. Many of them probably did some programming with TRS-80, Commodore 64s, IBM PCs, etc. in their youth. Maybe--just maybe--they are a resource that could be tapped to help fill the programmer gap. But it will need an initiative from someone of the stature of IBM to make it a reality and ensure that "graduates" of such an initiative would be able to break through the insane experience barrier that so many shops erect around their hiring process.

Have you encountered this problem? Come up with and solutions of your own?  We'd love to hear about them through comments to the blog.

Happy Endings

We're writing this on the plane flying from Stockholm to Heathrow en-route to a brief stopover at home before we head to Minneapolis for the upcoming RPG & DB2 Summit.

Our friends at Data3 did a wonderful job and the event was very successful with more than 100 of the faithful gathered together to hear about the "latest and greatest" in all things IBM i. The location was beautiful too - just outside the downtown core right alongside the channel into the main harbor. In fact one of the sights at the hotel is to watch the daily arrival and departure of the large and very modern ferries, which the locals affectionately refer to as the "booze cruise." Two or three of these leave Stockholm each day and make the overnight run to Finland or sometimes, apparently, simply into the nautical equivalent of no-man's land. Why? Because Sweden has very high taxes on liquor and apparently these cruises take long enough for you to qualify for a substantial duty-free allowance. As our friends Trevor Perry and Alison Butterill noted, this accounts for the people getting off what appears to be a cruise liner carrying only tiny overnight bags--and very large bags of duty-free items!

But telling you how lucky we were to have been teaching in such a gorgeous location was not intended to be the point of this blog. Instead we wanted to pass on a story related to us by our hosts of one Swedish company's successful approach to the problem of finding new RPG blood. Like many of our customers, the company faced an aging RPG population. While some of their work is outsourced, the organization felt the need to have a strong in-house core to the development team. The solution was to hire recent computer studies graduates and have them trained in RPG. Those of you who read our blog regularly will know that this is an approach we have long advocated, and we have been involved in several such programs. It was encouraging, therefore, to see others successfully using this approach. The training consisted of a three-week classroom period, followed by four weeks of practical hands-on experience and then an additional week in the classroom. Needless to say, crucial to this effort to persuade these new hires that RPG did not mean "Role Playing Game" was the use of modern tools like RDP--no green-screen chains for these newcomers!

If you can read Swedish you can find the details in Data3's excellent magazine. We tried Google translate but it just isn't good enough to publish in that form. So, we hope to work with our friends at Data3 to produce an English version, which with luck we can share with you in next month's IBM i EXTRA eNewsletter.

It is nice to hear a story with a happy ending! But Jon will probably never persuade Susan that herring  is a real delicacy worth exploring.

Don't Just Sit There - Vote Now!

Don't worry - we're not going all political on you, tempting as that might be sometimes. However, there's more than one vote that warrants your attention over the next few days - and it is as important for those of us who live outside the USA as those of our readers who do.

So what are we talking about? COMMON Europe's Top Concerns voting is what. Even though the Europeans organize this effort, it is aimed at a worldwide audience. This is now the 7th year that COMMON Europe have organized this poll and the results to date have been interesting. The fact that some categories such as "Aggressive marketing of IBM i by IBM" get a high ranking should come as no surprise, although the fact that it ranked only in 6th place in 2011 might surprise some. What beat it out? Well "Satisfy internal customers" came in first, followed by "Keep the skills current for existing staff" and "Attract the younger generation to IBM i". We have to believe that the majority of the votes for "Keep the skills ..." came from the "existing staff" themselves because training budgets always seem to be the first thing to go when finances get tight so it seems unlikely that managers were voting this way. It was good to see "Attract the younger generation ..." be recognized as a major concern.

Why is this poll important? Well IBM talk a lot to large users, such as those represented by the LUG (Large User Group) and also spend a lot of time listening to ISVs. But it is much harder for them to get a feel for what matters to "ordinary" users. This survey helps to fill that gap and has the added advantage of being open to all IBM i users around the world. In fact, even IBMers get to vote!

On the Top Concerns web site (www.topconcerns.org), you can vote for this year's top concerns - and maybe even win an iPod for your trouble. There are only a few days left to get your votes in for this year. While you are there don't forget to check out the results of the previous year's polls. The categories and polling method have changed over the years but comparing the results from earlier years can be interesting.

So stop reading - and go vote now.

All done voting? Good - well done! Time for some words on education.

First - for our European/Scandinavian readers, we're headed your way and we'd love to see you. We're working with COMMON Luxembourg  on 9 Oct and COMMON Belgium on 11 Oct. Then we head to Stockholm for the annual Data3 conference 14 - 16 Oct. Lots of i developer topics will be covered. Check it out if you're in any of those areas and don't forget to say hi! Last year's Data3 event was fun and informative and also very successful, so we're hoping we'll see an even bigger audience there this year.

Second - we thought we'd pass on a recent recent discovery in the area of education resources. Coursera.org is a company that partners with top universities around the world to offer high-quality university level education free of charge. Yup - completely free.

One upcoming course that caught our eye is Rice University's Introduction to Python. It is aimed at non-programmers, so that even those of us who wrestle with OO should find it useful. The whole programming environment is browser based so there is no software to load. Our friend (and former RPG compiler writer) Hans Boldt has often proclaimed, in our blog comments and elsewhere, his love of the Python language so this is a good opportunity to check it out. Usage on IBM i seems to be growing if recent forum postings and pieces in the trade press are anything to go by. The IBM i home base for Python seems to be www.iseriespython.com. Check it out.

 

The Pi That You Can't Buy (Yet)

In previous blog entries, we've talked about the falling number of students enrolling in computer science programs and the impact this has on the availability of new programmers. Today we attended a lunchtime lecture by Professor Chris Tyler at Toronto's Seneca College. Tyler is a man who is part of a movement that aims to change this situation. The lecture was part of the Toronto User Group's annual TEC event and a huge "thank you" to the user group for bringing such a timely subject to the community.

Tyler's lecture began with a discussion on the findings of a group from Cambridge University in the U.K. as to the causes of this drop in interest, which is pretty much worldwide. In essence the findings were that while today's students are very tech savvy, it is purely from a user standpoint. They have little or no idea what is "under the hood" and perhaps more to the point, are usually actively discouraged from playing around with the home PC because Mum and Dad need it for their banking, shopping. Facebook, email, etc. That's a very different situation from what those of us who had (say) a Commodore 64. When you powered up a C64 the first thing you saw was the word "Ready" and you were in the Basic interpreter and being actively encouraged to program away. Not only that but for the hardware minded, the machine came with a complete schematic of the entire circuit board, had exposed edge connectors that a simple kit from Radio Shack could plug into, etc. This is very different from today's almost hermetically sealed home PCs.

The Cambridge group's response was to come up with a bare-bones computer that was designed for:

• Ultra low cost--$25 or $35 if you want the optional Ethernet and USB capabilities
• Encouraging experimentation by being open to hardware extensions and software programmability
• Using open-source software 

The result was Raspberry Pi. A credit-card sized all-in-one computer system based on an ARM processor, which is the type of CPU that powers most of the smart mobile devices in the world. To find out more you can go to the Raspberry Pi Foundation's website.

So where does Tyler's group at Seneca fit into the picture? The group had been working for a while on an ARM processor version of the Fedora Linux distribution and offered it to the foundation as the base operating system for the Pi. The result of this collaboration is that the Pi will have an incredible range of free open-source software available for it right from the get-go. In fact Chris' team has managed to create a distribution that is 1.6 Gb in size and fits on an SD card (that's the type in your cell phone or camera if you're not sure what we mean). When the card is plugged into a slot on the Pi and the machine is powered up, it will automatically begin the configuration process, including setting the whole of the card, whatever its size, up effectively as the system's hard drive. A very clever idea. Change the SD card, change the OS!

Sometimes You Can Te Too Successful!

The foundation's initial plan was to produce 10,000 units. When they went on sale Feb. 29, the servers of the two vendors handling the sales were stalled by the sheer volume of people trying to order one. They took orders for 350,000 before closing the ordering system. If you want one, the best you can do is to "register your interest" and those expressing interest will be notified when a new batch of orders can be taken. Even when orders are opened up again, it's anticipated that not all the registered interested parties will actually be able to place an order. That's success on an unprecedented scale. To get on the list of interested parties, register with one of the two distributers here  or here.

One of the other fascinating things about the project is that even at these incredibly low prices, everyone in the supply chain makes money and the foundation will be able to be self-funding.

Back in 2007 we blogged about another very low-priced computer targeted to the education of children--the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program. We found out from Tyler that the latest incarnation of the hardware for the OLPC is also ARM-processor based and will be running the Seneca group's Fedora software in the future.

While Raspberry Pi and OLPC are both oriented to making inexpensive computers for purposes of education, the goals of the two programs are quite different. OLPC laptops are intended to be used "as is" to provide a wide range of educational materials on a wide variety of general topics at very low cost, whereas the primary goal of Raspberry Pi is to encourage kids to experiment with the computer itself, encouraging primarily IT innovation and education.

We're excited about the prospect of reawakening an interest in technology careers in kids. It looks like Raspberry Pi offers a good inexpensive vehicle to help us get there.

We're already on the waiting list.