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Comment by nullc | Hacker News Reader

This is good news— the rpi is really an embarrassing system. It is shockingly slow compared to other small arm systems clock per clock. A lot of people seem to be trying things on it that would be fine on almost any other arm SBC but fail on rpi…

There are many alternatives which are much faster but none are within a factor of two of the rpi's price, so people keep buying the rpi and walking away disappointed.

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Somehow people keep missing the point: Raspberry Pi is meant to be a nearly-disposable kids' learning toy first and foremost. The object of the game, from the beginning, was to get a programming sandbox into as many small hands as possible—in families that couldn't afford a "real" computer, or couldn't/wouldn't allow kids to try potentially damaging things on the family machine.

It's nice that it can, incidentally, play other roles, but those other roles are not it's purpose. It's not an "embarrassing system"; low cost, "universal" peripherals (common televisions as the "monitor", for example), enough portability to get the unit to and from school are its primary concerns. It's an OLPC for the western world, a BBC Micro reborn for the modern age. Y'all rabbits might like these Trix, but they're for kids.

"in families that couldn't afford a 'real' computer, or couldn't/wouldn't allow kids to try potentially damaging things on the family machine."

How many of those families are going to buy a rpi, have the knowledge to teach set it up and teach their kids, etc? What's going to get kids programming is a really cheap "normal" computer, just like it always has.

Schools were and are the primary target. Just go back and read the story behind Raspberry Pi[1]. The point always was to get back to the days of the BBC Micro and a general introduction to computing fundamentals (as opposed to mere "using the applications" training) for British kids (although kids in other places can benefit as well), based on the notion that broad exposure would mean a larger cohort of people to draw upon as adults in the tech sector (commercial and academic) in later life. Full-featured computers in schools are expensive for this sort of task, and not everybody can take their work home with them to expand upon it—or even just to do homework. At around the price of a textbook, the Raspberry Pi makes that at least possible.

The low price, suggested curriculum, etc., are a big part of making it work. Or is it your contention that computing should be restricted to people who can afford a "proper" computer?

[1] http://www.raspberrypi.org/about

Thanks Stan, for setting the record straight.

It's amazing how many people totally miss the point about R-Pi. There's so much hate (here and in other forums) because the Pi is not fast enough, or open enough, or supported enough, or available enough.

People don't realize that it was never intended to be a replacement to your desktop computer, or a completely open hardware platform, or widely available at retailers, or a commercial system widely supported. The primary target are schools and young developers, interested in learning. Honestly, kids don't really care if the GPU is open sourced or not. But they'd love things like this: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/freshers/raspberrypi/tutorials/os/.

I completely disagree with you calling it an "embarrassing system". I've had my Pi for a couple of weeks now and been happily tinkering with it. For the price I am utterly amazed with it (in fairness, I'm a bit of an old git and amazed that you can buy a 2TB HD for less than £100 so I may not be the best judge here).

Whilst it may not be the quickest thing out there, it is a start, and I think this is the most important thing about the Pi - it is a statr. It is so cheap it will get people interested in and tinkering with this kind of technology. As a result more people will move into this space, surely the Cubieboard is testament to that. (As well as the Parallella[1] which sadly I don't think will make it's Kickstarter goal)

[1] http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/adapteva/parallella-a-su...

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