[Wylug-discuss] Raspberry Pi to run BBC Micro 2

[Smylers]

Dave Fisher writes:

> Great news: BBC creating new open source cross-platform education
> based IDE that will run on Raspberry Pi and Linux
> http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/news/raspberry-pi-to-run-bbc-micro-2/

Yay, that is good news! And they've even revived the old owl logo:
http://www.bbchelloworld.co.uk/

> I would have thought that even Java fans would concede that it's not
> the ideal beginner language ... despite what some UK university CS
> departments seem to think.

When I've chatted about this with people who teach in computer science
departments, at least one claims their department chose Java because
that was what the demand was for. Before they taught Java, would-be
students were asking them why not, and applying to rival universities
which did, believing it led to better job prospects.

So the good news is that computer science departments may not be as
ignorant as it first appears regarding sensible languages for teaching
programming.

The bad news is that that doesn't matter, because the language choice is
effectively being driven by the misconceptions of 16-year-olds ...

Smylers