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Comment by qayxc | Hacker News Reader

> If we lost the knowledge of how to tech how the ARM architecture works, as was the case prior to the raspberry pi but after the death of the Acorn line of RISC PCs, we would have lost quite a bit of important knowledge.

In which universe did that ever happen? ARM was alive and kicking to the point that even Intel had its own ARM designs. Heck, I worked with ARM-powered devices 20 years ago and those were far from being "lost knowledge".

Just because something isn't being hyped to edge of the solar system at a given point in time, doesn't mean it's dead or forgotten...

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The Acorn Archimedes came out in 1987. Is 20ish years vs 30ish years a relevant distinction when the far newer raspberry pi serves to reify the educational goals and funding that the Archimedes was underwritten to do. Unless you are saying the pipeline for educating tomorrows computer engineers should start with M1 macs instead of raspberry pi, it seems we are in violent agreement. There is a typo where I wrote "to tech" instead of "to teach," perhaps that added confusion.

Raspberry Pi had a great image and great marketing. But it wasn't the only hobby device available at the time, and ARM was massively used in industry. I think talking about loss of knowledge there is a little weird.

(I also found a lot of the rhetoric around the RasPi at its launch quite weird, and very dismissive of all the other work that had taken place before it)

Any examples of any of those hobbiest devices at the time that had scale of educational impact that raspberry pi has had at $5-$35 a pop? Arduino is not a single board computer. It largely needs something like a pi or better just to program it.

I won't dispute they brought the prices down, but there were sub-$100 devices around, some (like the sheevaplug) included the case, power supplies and onboard storage, though no video output.

The pi was part of a continuum, rather than a revolution in its own right.

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