While this is cool, why does it have to be on a Raspberry Pi? Could this not be a VM (VirtualBox, since it's free) image as well? That way there's no hardware to buy and you simply install one program to run the image.<p>A great example of this is ArchiveTeam's Warrior: <a href="http://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Warrior" rel="nofollow">http://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Warrior</a>
From the Raspberry Pi FAQ: "<i>We want to see it being used by kids all over the world to learn programming.</i>"<p>I guess Coder is exactly the type of project the Pi was built for. Of course, you can install Coder on a "regular" PC or Mac but having a credit-card sized computer <i>dedicated</i> to a single educational task makes it more inclined to be played around with.<p>You give this to a little kid: he sees it like a toy, a <i>powerful</i> toy, with which he can develop "super-powers". It's less overwhelming than a full-size regular PC, and as a parent you can be assured that your kid won't mess up things, or launch a game because he got bored with coding.<p>I can see myself offering a Pi with Coder as a gift to anyone, even an adult, eager to learn coding. There are other projects similar to this one, but more focused on programming (Python especially), whereas HTML and CSS (and to some extent JS) is probably easier to grasp for beginners, especially because it's Web stuff.<p>The most valuable feature of Coder is <i>how it looks</i>. It's colorful and friendly, with a nice interface, which can be less obscure than a console.<p>By the way, I <i>loved</i> the introduction video. It reminded me of Google's own presentations. Then I realized Coder was made by Googlers.
Slightly off-topic: though I get a bit tired of this style of presentation videos, this one is incredibly well done, especially for an open-source project (even though backed by Google).<p>That project is pretty cool, though I do feel that having a Raspberry Pi to do that seems unnecessary. Wouldn't the JSBin and Codepen's of the world allow you to do most of this? Granted, as a kid, I'm sure having your <i>own</i> computer to work on makes a big difference.
This is great! Very cool project. The fact that it's open source makes it all the better. Definitely a tool I wish I had while I was learning how to code.<p>Seems like you can port this to almost anything, not just a Raspberry Pi.
I'm a sales and marketing guy who loves technical companies, but I'm hardly technical. I just bought a RaspberryPi to get excited about programming so this is excellent. I'm putting this on a card now and can't wait to fire it up when I get home!
This would be very easy to get running on the BeagleBoneBlack as well, and with a tiny bit of work, BoneScript could be baked right in, allowing easy access to GPIO ports. It would be even easier (and much prettier) to learn basic electronics than Arduino.<p>That being said, for more advanced electronics with RPi or BBB, it's so beneficial to be able to host an Arduino on top to do the bitbanging. Trying to use the BBB's Programmable Realtime Unit sucks!
Maybe I'm missing something here, but if you are connecting to Coder then you can't access the internet? I'd imagine that having the learning material side by side (from sites like Codecademy) would be really handy. If you set this up in a classroom would everyone be able to access it through the browser and work on individual projects?
I was excited to try this out until I saw that it won't work on Linux, and won't work on Windows without installing Apple's Bonjour. What possessed them to do this?<p>Does anyone know if there is a way to use this on Linux or Windows without installing nagware on my main machine?