I want to share some thoughts on the plethora of hardware devices that are aimed at people with the intention of getting them into programming and making things things like the art we know the raspberry pi, the embeds, the beagle.

What's it on?

Duh.

I'm I'm unsure about them as a training tool for beginners.

Let me make it very clear from the start.

I'm not against the intentions off these devices.

I think it's admirable that entities such as the Raspberry Pi Foundation doing the great work that they're doing that producing fantastic pieces of hard work on the software ecosystem for very, very competitive price.

Andan attractive price and it does make hard were accessible to all people.

I mean, they're £30 for pie device and you get a fully functioning computer.

That's that's wonderful.

Brilliant.

I wish those things did exist when I was growing up on the same for the Arduino.

I like the fact that it makes hard work programming available to all sorts.

You get the creative types making the art installations on DDE.

You get people putting it on drones and doing interesting things with sensors, and I amuse.

You know, that's wonderful.

I love that creative exploration is his educational.

It is fantastic.

But I take issue when these devices are used andare aimed at people who are looking for an entry point into the world of programming.

And I think this for two reasons.

I don't think that the blinking on and off of an L E D, which is the typical embedded systems hello World Project, is suitably informative to get people food I've never programmed before.

I mean most stress.

This is for people who have never, never seen code before to suddenly dumped them.

Thio see like environment on having intimate in function and get them to understand why in Led is blinking on enough.

That's that's quite a tricky thing.

I don't think embedded hardware systems of the correct platform for training people on how to program, and I mean real beginners here.

People have never coded before.

The only exception would be electron ICS engineers who haven't coded because they can then attach their circuits to a process er on.

They understand how their circuit behaved and they understand how their circuit interacts with the process, sir.

So really, all they're left with is a software option, and it may well be for typically, electronics engineer that a software ecosystem is more alien to them than the hard World War.

So in that one situation, Embedded Systems is a training platform for programming is probably probably applicable.

Unacceptable.

So if we consider Raspberry Polly's approach, when must we probably first came out?

It waas, a small portable limits computer.

Were every program on the computer, you could effectively press a button and have a look at the source code underneath That is quite cool on, probably useful for people with some programming experience.

He wants a tweak, but I don't think that the best way to introduce somebody to programming is to look at the source code for existing applications straightaway.

You know, lesson to perhaps, but not lesson one.

But I also take issue with rescue pie, trying to become a platform to teach Children how to program.

I'm sorry about the camera glare of the most.

I was clearly a beautiful day.

This is what it's like in the north of England, anyway, The the tools that recipe pie provided to introduce Children to programming.

I find to be a little patronizing, and I'm hoping that this year I might go some way to addressing by releasing some videos and some tools of my own.

Anyway, we'll see what time commit.

I don't want to knock the ambition off the developers of these applications, and they are quite polished applications.

I just don't think Children need to be taught how to code with cartoon characters on building blocks, drag and drop.

Maybe that is a bit of an old fuddy duddy inside me, but I just think it's, uh, it's too far removed from what's actually going on on Bear with me here.

I wonder if the fundamentals such a sequence and decision making on looping storage are really portrayed through the medium of cartoon characters on brightly colored objects.

I think I think that's patronizing.

I think young Children are quite capable of understanding a list list off instructions on the screen on they know to go from the top of the list to the bottom of the list on that's that's a sequence center.

That's an order, and they can understand some fundamental conditions if some value is bigger than another than to take a different list.

The best pie in embedded systems circles I find to have a bit of an identity crisis is it's an embedded systems device.

Or or is it a full desktop PC aimed at being an educational device?

The GP I owe on the rescue pie is poor blinking and led on enough.

Far enough.

I know it does have accessories for cameras, but you really have to be some of the advanced engineering in order.

Thio take advantage of these high speed into connection, quite likely designing your own PCB.

So if you're already at that level, fine.

Fair enough.

You're you're repurpose ing some of the more advanced functionality of the bike.

But let's let's take your beginning complete in led on Enough.

But then all the canoe is clip other things to the GPO, and even then it's not particularly exciting.

And often you'll find with embedded systems that the debugging environments either very complicated or very poor or non existent.

This could be very off putting to a new programmer the frustration of not being able to understand why your program is failing, not being able to step for your code line by line and do an analysis, which, by the way, I think is one of the most important debugging tools too available.

I also think that platforms like Card we know in my experience they don't seem to go far enough.

They have a very see like syntax, which is fine, strange, but they don't let me do see, like things, making your embedded system do anything useful other than perhaps blinking and led or responding to a momentary button press just require that you really understand the things that it's connected to.

It has to be connected to additional peripherals, which means you have to understand power.

You have to understand communication bosses.

You have to understand how to configure the device to operate in certain modes.

Yes, all very well.

You can dragon job code from places you could pull in abstraction layers, which abstract all of the educational value away from doing the test.

Which is not to say that an embedded system isn't a platform for people to use to learn things, but it's just that this using it is an entry point to the whole world of programming I think is a mistake on what I don't want to see is the dumbing down, off embedded systems tools to accommodate total beginners.

And while we're on the subject off embedded systems programming environments Microchip, what have you done to the pick programming environment?

We've not had much traffic today, so this one's only gonna be a short one.

So be I'm interested to know if if you carry it all.

What are your thoughts on using embedded systems as programming teaching tools.

If you have any thoughts told, please leave them below.