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Raspberry Pi creator Eben Upton on how and why to get kids coding

Raspberry Pi creator Eben Upton on how and why to get kids coding

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raspberry pi

The Linux-based Raspberry Pi computer is tiny, cheap, and very popular. But while plenty of adults adore the $35 device, designer Eben Upton hopes it will also spark a new wave of interest in programming for children. In an interview with Wired, Upton discusses his own experience with programming and what he sees as the failure of current computer education programs and "intuitive" computers. Earlier machines, he says, "were programmable. When you first turned them on, they booted into Basic and before loading a program, you had to program them. That meant that quite a lot of us were beguiled into learning to program, and I think that’s where my generation of hobbyist programmers came from."

He's had similar success taking the Raspberry Pi into classrooms and getting kids to work with games like Snake, where "by the end of the session, you have to pry the boards out of the children’s hands." Go through and read the whole thing for more about computer education and why everyone should learn to code.