Elephant in corner of room: The City which he is so contemptuous of is the one industry in the UK that pays technical people fair wages.
I studied Mech Eng at college; no-one does that who doesn't want to be an engineer. When I graduated in the mid-90s there were no jobs, so I went into high-tech. But my CV is still floating around, and I occasionally get called by recruiters in engineering. Now I am no rock star, I am paid well (market rate) but not extravagantly so. But these engineering jobs pay a fraction of what I earn, for the equivalent years of experience. And they wonder why no-one wants to do it?
This comes back to the old class system which is still strong in the UK. No matter how educated, an engineer is not "one of us" to the management class, and will never be paid fairly in the old industries, never more than a paper-pushing middle management bureaucrat who went to the "right" school. Only high-tech (enlightened) and The City (where managers are so well paid that they don't feel threatened) pay technical people fairly.
Anyone smart enough to be an engineer - and there are plenty who want to be - is smart enough to not be exploited in that way. And that is why manufacturing died in the UK.
It's only very recently that I learned how odd the legal status of the City of London is - it's effectively a private corporation that has assumed the functions of a local authority. It is also the only place in the UK where businesses get to vote - businesses have 24,000 votes and actual residents only have 8,000 votes.
The actual amount of money controlled by the City of London Corporation isn't public either - e.g. there is the "City Cash" fund.
My favourite bit of City trivia is that they have an official representative at Parliament, who gets to sit opposite the speaker - the wonderfully named Remembrancer.
[Edit: For some highly entertaining, if slightly paranoid, ranting about the City and the evils of offshore finance I can recommend "Treasure Islands" by Nicholas Shaxson - http://treasureislands.org/]
The UK is weird when you start looking at "constitutional issues" (since it doesn't really have one). There are lots of "technicalities" which aren't true in practice. Like technically it has a state religion (Church of England), however it's quite secular as a country compared to many others. Technically the Queen has to approve and sign any law, but it's a rubber stamp, she can't refuse to sign an act. Technically Parliament can pass just about any law "that's not naturally impossible" (checks and balances? what's that?), but there are laws and other treaties, and the judges have some power etc.
The monarch can refuse to sign legislation. However the refusal to sign would trigger the dismantling of the monarchy plunging the UK into a deep constitutional crisis not seen since Oliver Cromwell.
And while technically the House of Commons can pass just about any law it wants, the House of Lords generally acts as a counterweight to reign in worst of the Commons. Usually if its not in the governments manifesto and the bill gets kicked back to the Commons then by convention its usually kicked into the long grass unless the changes proposed by the Lords are acceptable.
Of course the Commons could invoke the Parliament Act to push through legislation it generally only does so in rare circumstances (a handful over the last century). However any attempt to do this over anything other than a firm manifesto pledge would likely again plunge the UK into said constitutional crisis.
So the checks and balances in the UK system come from the fact none of parties involved wants to deal with the mess that would result if they didn't follow prior convention.
> it's a rubber stamp, she can't refuse to sign an act
Funny - in Australia and New Zealand we have Governors General to represent the Queen, and they're also given the final say on whether a law is passed. In New Zealand the people I've talked to have considered it purely ceremonial, but in Australia 1975 that viewpoint was refuted when the governor general dissolved the parliament.
Well technically the Monarch and Parliament have disagreed in the past, but there was a civil war over it (Parliament won). So it's tricky how they would settle it now. Though Parliament (in UK) has the right to depose the monarch and get someone else in (Glorious Revolution, where they got rid of the Catholics), so if the queen refused to sign a law, they'd get someone else in.
Well it gets tricky here. The Queen is Supreme Governor of the Church of England, and the head of state of the UK (the Queen/King) has to take an oath to defend & uphold it (i.e. no catholics allowed to be monarch), though they are changing that.
There is also a Church of Ireland (which was disestablished as the offical religion of Ireland (which was in the UK) in 1870ish), and Church in Wales. Scotland has sorta it's own church (think it's a slight different variant) which it has a right to exist due to the Act of Union of 170x.
So it's all a bit complicated and depending on how you define "UK" and "UKwide"
NB Although I've always been an atheist, I grew up in a small community in the North of Scotland dominated by the Kirk and it's more zealous offshoots. If you've seen Lars von Triers "Breaking the Waves" then you'll get the idea.... :-)
This really is the biggest non-story of all time, being that virtually no-one actually lives in the City, and the decisions that the Corporation make relate mostly to boring municipal stuff.
I stopped reading Reddit about the time the entirety of r/uk was threatening to occupy twitter or something about this. Please don't bring it here too.
The City (where managers are so well paid that they don't feel threatened) pay technical people fairly
Another reason why The City might pay higher: Since there is so much money at stake/to be made, and since it's so compeditive, and rewards can be gotten so quickly (you could make millions in one year, no need to wait for things to pay off) that it would be foolish for a upper class toff to sit on their hands and not hire the bright young commoner.
It could be that the traditionalist companies probably missed out on a lot of good techies, and hence weren't able to compete and were marginalised by companies who did hire based on merit, not class.
I agree.
When I left my job as a games developer for a gig in the City my salary doubled.
I had zero experience in financial software and about 5 years as a professional game developer.
In that year I was the third developer leaving that studio for the City.
The work was less interesting, but I went from living like a student to having enough income to live independently in London while saving enough to start my own business.
The only software jobs in the UK that approach the US in salary terms are in the City.
> The only software jobs in the UK that approach the US in salary terms are in the City.
You can find considerably more interesting contract work outside the City that pays the same as a salaried role in the City - worth considering if you don't mind a little uncertainty, don't want to work overtime, and want to be able to switch around whenever things get dull...
I'd be curious about City vs Wall Street salaries for engineers. Even in the US they are paid more than the vast majority of other programmers. I wouldn't be so proud of the financial sector paying engineers fair wages, because the bottom line is it's crumbs to them. They are skimming more cream off the economy without producing anything tangible than anyone else, so they can afford to pay above market to the privileged few. It's not a scalable model for increasing average salaries though.
The UK (and Europe) really needs to figure that out. I was able to move to London because I was moving from SV and I got a cost of living increase on top of my US market salary. If I was born here and forced to accept London market salaries I would be looking for my ticket out of here ASAP. As technology and mobility increases it's going to be increasingly important to economies to retain talent, something which I believe is obscured for the super rich who make money by arbitrage highly abstracted from the value in the base economy.
It's not "above market"; that's the point. Why shouldn't engineers be paid as well as doctors, lawyers, accountants, etc? What The City pays is what all should pay.
Engineering died in the UK because the management class can't tell the difference between a professional mechanical engineer and a car mechanic (not that the latter isn't a skilled worker). In the rest of the world "Engineer" is a meaningful, exclusive title.
Most software companies that hire now could solve their problem by offering more money. More people will hear about your job the more above average your pay is. The higher your pay above average is, the easier it is to entice people to move (i.e. you widen your pool of potential people to include people who already have a job). If you pay more, you can make up for any disadvantages in your workplace, from boring dull work, to "you're not a sexy workplace like Google".
The lesson is that companies are strugglying because they aren't offering enough money. Ergo, if you offer more money, you struggle less.
If you're building e-trade that's tangible, but the majority of engineers in finance are building internal tools to assist in finding arbitrage opportunities for the firms they work for.
I don't think you realize how complex the software in the financial industry is. Finance is probably the second most software driven industry in the world after the software industry itself.
Only a tiny percentage of developers in the financial world are working on arbitrage, the average bank probably has more developers working on compliance software than arbitrage software. A vast majority of software development work at most banks is infrastructure (integration between systems, data feeds, settlement, etc.) which supports the day-to-day operations.
You're right, I'm painting with too wide a brush. My main problem is with investment banks who make the profits while the taxpayers take the risk. It really has nothing to do with tangible or not.
I just love the fact that the Raspberry Pi isn't about money at this stage - it's a philanthropic initiative designed to help the world progress. Ultimately it gives computer access to far more people who will benefit economically in the long run
We can't all be rich, there aren't enough resources. We can all be moderately well off IMO (but we have to address population with vigour) and the rich dont want to stop being privileged.
Of course the free market isn't efficient in hiring. Companies do everything they can to hide salaries and, for whatever reason, the culture is such that people generally won't discuss it either.
Imagine if everything you ever bought worked this way. You want some eggs? You'll need to go in the store managers office, he'll make an offer and you can accept it or negotiate. You might not even get the eggs. Once you do, you're afraid to tell anyone else how much they cost. How efficient would that market be?
That's because salaries are not just about economics. They are also a proxy for "what is my status in society?" They are not just another type of eggs, so to speak.
There is a similar thing going on with sex. The difference between a back rub and rub&tug isn't just the target ___location, it's also the associated taboos and stigmas.
(Circuit IV, for those of you who've read Prometheus Rising...)
I find this argument weak as an "in favor" argument. How much we pay for things is also a status proxy ("You got that for how much? How much did I pay? Hrm, I don't remember...."). And we simply chose it to be this way. We could just as easily insist on transparency so that less people get ripped off.
The real issue is that, bizarrely, workers buy into silly fantasies about "family" etc., instead of realizing that selling your time for a wage is a market action and must be treated as such.
Or that there is nor a free market in operation in these places/industries.
And hence assuming that a free market is more efficient, that you can make more money by trying to make the market more free-er (i.e. hire based on merit, not class, etc.).
Source? Do you have any actual evidence that say the ratio of profit per employee to average salaries is lower at banks than at engineering firms?
Simply paying more isn't the same as not being exploitative, even if it does make you feel better about yourself. I suppose it might make sense to consider the wider picture too, like how much of that increased income is produced by more fully exploiting other laborers.
"Exploitation occurs when those appropriating surplus labour — whether in the form of surplus-value, surplus product or direct surplus labour — are different than those performing surplus labour..."
There is no universal definition exactly but they share certain elements. In particular exploitation is the result of a power inequality between the laborer and the exploiter.
The question is not simply about the split of profits between capital investors and laborers. (Since capital is the accumulation of surplus labor, it's already exploitative.) The original act of exploitation it's self occurs much earlier. When you do not receive renumeration equal in value to that of your surplus labor.
Putting real numbers to those values is hard and I don't really have a satisfying answer to give you. You might find Elinior Ostroms work interesting though. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elinor_Ostrom
Interesting that there is a dip in the graph around the time I graduated!
But, are these engineers being paid proportionally to the value they create? That is the acid test. The class system works both ways; people being held down are ingrained to believe that that is their station in life.
Pay is determined by supply and demand, not by a cabal of fat cat plutocrats agreeing how much to dole out to different positions. The idea that people be paid "proportionally to the value they create" is an obsolete Marxist idea. Check out the "Marginal Revolution".
Manufacturing actually died in the UK because of the unions. Workers became greedy, and unproductive. They were unable to compete with other countries, and instead staged big endless strikes demanding ever rising salaries, better working conditions etc - which made them even more uncompetitive with emerging countries.
You can either have great working conditions and pay, or a good manufacturing industry. Can't have both. Some other poorer country will just treat their workers worse, and so be more productive.
(I'm reading "Thatcher - the downing street years" at the moment - a great read).
I hope you realise that regurgitating from what's obviously going to be a right-wing book is only half the story.
For example there was a discussion that I half caught on Radio 4 this very morning that claimed the death of manufacturing in the UK is mainly due to the government totally failing to invest in R&D for the last 15 years or so.
I think the truth is probably somewhat more complex and a combination of a lot of factors.
Also find people who were around in the Thatcher days, you'll find a lot of people who either despise her or love her, the book will be biased.
"the death of manufacturing in the UK is mainly due to the government totally failing to invest in R&D for the last 15 years or so."
Interesting. Why is it the government's obligation to invest in R&D (of manufacturing?), surely that's the responsibility of the manufacturers themselves?
They problem is that they don't, they'll take the low-risk route every time.
The debate included anecdotes saying that China, Germany and America have been pumping %-wise much higher amounts into R&D (or schemes to 'encourage' it) through their governments compared to the UK.
The German pay for factory workers isn't so great, by the way. Income structure is more flat in Scandinavia, for instance; compared to Sweden and Finland, Germany has cheap factory labor cost.
However, the main problem with British industries and collapse of some of them in 1970's was unionisation and political fighting. This included even outright sabotage, and of course abysmal build quality. My uncle had a Morris Marina, my father a Sunbeam Avenger. Never again a British car. British workers are OK as long as their overlords are Japanese or German.
This is a valid point but at the same time - can every country make a lot of money selling extremely high end luxury goods? It seems to me (but I'm very open to information that would change this view) that Germany occupies a rather special position that doesn't scale out world-wide.
> can every country make a lot of money selling extremely high end luxury goods?
It seems to be working well for Apple...
In any case, the biggest car company in Germany is VW, and I wouldn't consider them a "luxury" car manufacturer. And most of the Mittelstand in Germany are companies that are not household names, but are very successful in their particular industrial niches.
Is there such a thing as a "position" that scales out world-wide?
Just as every individual is unique in its skills, experience, available resources and ___location, so is each country. Surely China's cheap workforce cannot be replicated in Europe or the U.S. and China's biggest problem will be their own middle-class which gets richer, so you can clearly see that a cheap workforce is not sustainable in a growing economy.
Can the world replicate Silicon Valley or Hollywood? Maybe, maybe not, but surely a lot of effort is required and there are also cultural issues that makes this hard. Failure is accepted as a sign of progress in Silicon Valley, but in Japan it's unacceptable.
The way to grow is to rely on your core strengths and make your weaknesses obsolete. So for example if companies move to China for cheap labor, then pay engineers to build better robots, a strategy which in the long run can yield better and more efficient factories.
I personally don't associated Germany with luxury goods (not in the same way as Italy or Switzerland) but I do associated it with very high quality engineering.
The manufacturing problem in any first world country has the same problem, if anything USA has been the last to have the problem because they kept cheap workers cheaper for longer.
Look at Germany, they have both but that's partly the vertical companies being ethical and patriotic.
In the case of Germany, they did the smart thing of promoting their products as "High Quality". Even today, German manufactured goods command a premium in the market (automobiles, power-tools etc). The British had an excellent legacy of quality engineering, I guess they have squandered it. (Although not related to manufacturing, I am reminded of a quote about British Civil Engineering I had read that said that "Americans build for 50-100 years, but the British build forever". This is quite true in India; a lot of the infrastructure laid down by the British is still in use)
EDIT: In responses asking for examples, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Mumbai#City_developm... . The British were responsible for merging the many Islands of Mumbai to get what it is today. Also, the pipelines supplying fresh water to Mumbai were built by the British and are being augmented only in the last decade or so.
Indian railways is one of the third largest employers in the world (the Chinese Army and the UK National Health Service are the other two) and yet they are well known for being bloody awful.
EDIT: Forgot to add:
The engineering might be good, but the middle management was often really poor and the build quality of mass-produced items was usually sub-optimal.
Combined with post-war poverty here and post-war subsidies there (Japan) the UK had a weird combination of factors.
I have a policy of not arguing online any more as it tends to lead nowhere, so this will be my last response on this (I don't mean to be patronising here, just stating my position).
It's a autobiography by a right-wing leader, so if you talk about subject X then reference said book, it's likely that opinion will be right-wing, which was my point.
Anyway, I didn't mean any offence, and I don't want to get embroiled in a political argument, rather wanted to highlight that.
UK Manufacturing died because of the decision by the Thatcher government to privatize previously nationalized industries and abandoning the policy of full employment, happily accepting 2-3 million unemployed if it meant cheaper goods and services in the short term.
The unions certainly didn't help their cause, but it took two to tango to create the mess that is the UK economy.
Read the book (Or some other facts from the time).
She had to privatise industries because they became ridiculously uncompetitive and expensive to run.
During the previous socialist government the number of public sector workers increased drastically.
British steel was haemorrhaging money. And the unions response? Demand pay increases and strike. Same with the coal industry.
Would you rather she kept us paying billions in ever increasing public sector wage demands?
"Full employment" should not be a policy. You don't spend public money employing unproductive workers in useless public sector jobs just for the hell of it.
Full employment is something that happens naturally when individuals take responsibility for themselves.
The UK economy is a mess because of drastic overspending by socialist governments. Something we're having to put right (again). Shame the lessons of the 70s/80s weren't learnt.
FYI I actually lived through the Thatcher years so witnessed first hand the effects of her policies. I lived in one of the communities that she destroyed through her policies of privatization (enriching her supporters in the process) leaving thousands of workers with no future employment prospects and very little hope as the private sector having made its money promptly left town and did not deliver any of the promised new jobs.
(I agree that the actions of the unions in 70s are also to the blame, but a better approach would have been to engage the unions and slowly transition to better balance of public and private sector industries rather than the union busting and throwing the baby out with the bathwater that MacGregor and Thatcher did)
In answer to your question would I rather pay billions in the cost of benefits to support people being unemployed or billions keeping people working in nationalized industries or the public sector ? At least with the latter you are getting something back for your money rather than people sitting on their arse all day watching daytime TV.
I fundamentally believe that it is NOT and should not be the task of the government to "create" jobs.
We should toughen up benefits, which the current government is already doing, to ensure people out of work don't just sit on their arses all day.
You cannot do what the past socialist governments have done - create tons of unnecessary public sector jobs paid for by debt. That is unfair to everyone and just has to be paid for later.
> People often argue that children don't need to know how to program just as they don't need to be a car mechanic to drive a car. The analogy is useless because a car is a one-use machine (it moves), whereas a computer's very essence is its programmability, its ability to be a universal machine.
Surely a better analogy then would be that kids don't need to learn how to build things out of metal (Unless they particularly want to).
Welding and metalwork is for some people. Just as programming is for some people and not others.
Personally, I don't think we have fallen behind at all. Kids are still learning to program, just as they used to. Being taught in schools is (I guess) a nice to have, but not necessary.
It's easy for programmers to think that programming is the only thing that matters and it's crucial everyone learn it. But it's really not. All that matters is that people who wish to learn it, can.
I grew up on Apple 1 and 2, BBC Micro, and Sinclair ZX80/81 and Spectrum. Computing was new, exciting, available, and there was nothing like it or better at the time. These machines and what they represented were the future. They were even trendy. They were a 4 day week even!!!
That is not the case now.
While I admire the great priced hardware and look forward to playing with a Pi applying them to various "problems", I cannot see this kids lark at all. I showed my kids these things, and they have no interest in them what so ever. They have PC's, laptops, tablets, smart phones, Xboxs, PS3's, etc, etc. What do these things do? Not a lot. What can they be made to do? Less than everything we all ready own. They are impressed with it's size and price, but that is all. All they see is a very small computer that can do these same things their current machines can do, just.
Education? Think about schools (UK schools in my case). Budgets are squeezed, curricula locked down and time tight. Not to mention the lack of low level computing skills in the staff. Well, high level isnt much better, one of my kids acts as a class assistant because the teacher is pretty much clueless. Who is going to champion this and when? How are kids going to be motivated to do this low level stuff when they have alternatives that are much more exciting and "hip"?
Im sorry, I don't believe the Pi is going to solve the education aim at all. The idea is commendable, and I recognise the problem and support any attempt. But I honestly don't see kids getting excited and I don't see any structure that will either capture or motivate them.
Sure, they are selling. Rightly too. But who too? 8 year olds, or geek experimenters like me? I mean, I can see loads of geeky uses. Im loving it. But any kids? Any primary schools? I was in primary school when I first encountered a computer. Secondary school it too late.
I dont want to be down on it in any way, it is a brilliant bit of kit, incredible price too, loads of uses, I must have one, but cant see it starting an educational revolution like BBC Micro (and many others) did.
I mean, its just too darn complicated. The old ZX81, 4 chips. The circuit is so simple. The software was simple.
You know, its just so darn complicated now. There is too much of a gap.
Ooooooo. That was long, and a bit garbled. Sorry.... :)
>>>This is where the Raspberry Pi can save us: it’s now affordable for the government to equip any child in this country with a machine which they could take home with them and play with.
I have a problem with idealism like that. Andrew Carnegie thought if we had public libraries, it would enable people to help themselves. And where are we today? Education is free too, and where are we today?
I'm not saying that it might not help a small crucial group of children who -- through their own motivation -- will go on to do great things that will change their lives. But recognize that is the likely reality instead of pining for a universal enrichment that is never going to happen.
A chicken in every pot sounds good, but not everyone knows how -- or wants to learn how -- to cook.
You are greatly underestimating the value of public libraries. Even if we agree that only a few motivated individuals actually used the libraries, that itself is enough justification for their establishment (IMO). For instance, Richard Feynman used the public libraries extensively, and he has been a source of motivation for many generations of physicists/ engineers (including myself). (Being from India, when I was younger, I really did feel the disappointment of not having access to a public library.)
I don't really understand your negativity. I agree it's impossible to help everyone. But what could be the possible downside to trying? Why is idealism a dirty word these days?
I mean it is the idealism that motivates him to do this in the first place, if it turns out the raspberry pi motivates a few kids to become great engineers/inventors/scientists, that's great right? Would it have been better if he was cynical about it?
"I write this as the Raspberry Pi is selling at 700 units a second"
Really? That's 42,000 per minute, or a million a day. Sure about that?
This is apart from the fact that the rpi is _just a PC_. There's no new software, educational or otherwise. You can't just give every schoolchild one and expect anything particularly new to happen on it's own.
Finally the claim that a new model of computer will 'Save' the UK is so beyond ludicrous that I don't know where to begin. The device is not even manufactured in the UK!
I'm all for the sentiments expressed in the article, but let's try and keep the hysteria in check. There's a lot more work ahead.
I'm also hoping that RPi will kick off something here in the UK. But is there evidence that access to a computer is the main hurdle for kids wanting to learn programming in the UK? Clearly, the US hasn't had a Raspberry Pi.
Absolutely! RPi is cheap but every bit as powerful and complicated as a full PC. I don't see why everyone is saying it will revolutionize programming education for kids. They don't need cheap computers. They need simple computers; a "microworld" in which to play as Seymour Papert would say. That's not the same as an abstracted away or dumbed-down machine. Give them a constrained, simple environment and they'll have fun stretching it in ways you'd never imagine.
Something closer to the Fignition side of the spectrum. (I've personally liked taking my kids back to Papert's Turtle Graphics on such a simple machine: http://bit.ly/figlogo)
I share the authors desire for there to be more programmers and that software will eat the world.
However why do we need a Raspberry Pi? Can't you make software with any computer (except recent things from Apple)? Or is it a case that RP, being so popular will get people talking about creating and playing with stuff?
This is true but for a lot of parents there is one computer in the house and it's pretty precious, the kids can't 'fuck it up'.
Now, with a rp, when a kid says "I'm gonna strap my computer to this servo, and that servo to some junk in the garage and throw it all off of the roof AND IT WILL FLY!" a few less parent will freak out and there is more of a chance we can all benefit from what ever is in this kids head..... and latterly smashed on his lawn :)
There are a lot of ideas in kids heads that just don't see the light of day.
Yeah there are lots but even the poorest can afford a RP, which is more and more is better.
Even the richest parents would think twice about allowing little alice to throw her laptop off the roof.
As a kid that grew up without a lot of stuff and my parents struggled to get me my first computer (Oric 16k). It changed my life. I think the RP will change more lives and open up more avenues to genuinely poor kids who want to experiment.
Great ideas are not just generated by middle/upper class kids, us working class kids have great ideas too.
I realise this is a great generalisation and we live in a 'class-less society' and money goes up as well as down and some kids will indeed use RP to record their sisters undressing and some kids will try and snort their RP up their nose BUT it's a genuine opportunity for ALL kids and I endorse it.
Kids who do have their own laptops available are going to be gently hampered by choice-paralysis. What programming language do they learn[1]? Where do they start? What do they need to get to start?
They're also going to be gently hampered by having various incompatibilities - the programming environment will cause some stuff to not compile and while that's a great learning experience it's not what you want someone to be faced with on their first "Hello World" example. Note that all those home computers that people started on, typing listings from magazines, did not have those problems.
And advanced learners are going to be gently impeded by the OS not letting them get access to the hardware. I made a simple DA converter out of resistors soldered to a D25, which I used with NO$GB emulator. Building that DA was useful for me, and seeing the data lines on the D25 made the concept a lot more real. I guess this is possible under Linux or OSX or Windows but it's harder than just selecting addresses and sending data to them.
[1] My answer to those questions is to just use "Learn Python the Hard Way"; perhaps having a version tailored for young people and the Raspberry PI. Once they've worked their way through that they have the confidence to start choosing editors etc.
And many teenagers don't have a laptop of their own, and even if they do, or have a computer they can use in the house, it doesn't mean that it is theirs to break, and perhaps fix.
And yes, surely some have >1 already. So what? How does the fact that some kid has 3 computers do anything for a kid who has none?
Just to clear this up, there is nothing at all about the 'recent things from apple' that prevents kids using them to make software, except for price.
In fact I'd say that Apple's stack is outstanding for this purpose because it goes all the way from the very top (high level support for multi-touch) all the way to the very bottom (arm assembly), with an IDE and remote debugging at every level.
I think there is also a psychological advantage to the Apple stack for passionate young programmers - they aren't programming a toy.
For this purpose though, it is vastly more expensive than the alternatives.
If you mean that you can't develop native apps using only an iPad, that is true. For that you need to buy other tools (e.g. a Mac mini), which is why I said it was an expensive option.
I imagine the price being extremely low is a very useful factor when you are talking about giving every kid his own computer. With a Raspi, you can give your kid a decently powerful computer for around $100 (assuming you buy the keyboard, screen, mouse etc.).
Just like the computers of yore, the screen is the family TV. And USB keyboard/mouse are a couple of dollars second hand - I'd bet if UK school districts are anything like the ones I worked with in my youth, they have rooms filled with peripherals waiting to be recycled.
I had forgotten about the TV! I imagine a lot of people will go that route to save the money on a new monitor.
Though, I think about the insane hours I spend tinkering with my computer when I was a kid and it makes me wonder how many parents would be happy to let their children go on tinkering for hours like that on the commong family screen!
we can get deeper with the ARm processor more easily than with x86. This isn't just about javascript or other High High level languages (although that is important), its about the fundamentals of programming and computer science.
Interesting that this article does not mention three things:
1. The designers of the Raspberry Pi have said that while their intention was to design and manufacture the device fully within the UK, the latter turned out to be impossible from a business perspective due to the high import taxes of materials for electronic assembly.
2. Why will the untested potential of the Raspberry Pi "save the UK" when an already extremely successful and much older electronics company like ARM (also based in Cambridge) has already got there first? ARM's devices are used all over the world for the lower power efficiency of their CPU designs, most notably in Apple devices.
ARM's success has had no impact on the trend towards services in the UK economy since its founding in 1990.
3. When the size (GDP impact) of the City relative to the UK real economy is six times larger than the size of Wall Street relative to the US real economy, you can be sure that if there is any change it will be very slow indeed.
The UK long ago given up the many benefits of engineering and manufacturing. It takes a considerable amount of time to ramp up the expertise to build competitive products in the world today. Just look at the centuries old Germanic Mittlestand and the 40-year Korean engineering sector development - the formerly fastest economic developer in the world. Also, engineering in the UK (unlike in the rest of the EU) has serious cultural and financial downsides plus little government support.
what's with the increasingly histrionic posts here? one small computer will not "save" a particular country any more than one hack of github will destroy software development as we know it.
did "raspberry pi might increase interest in software development slightly, although it's hard to see why this should be restricted to the uk since it's available internationally" not sound catchy enough?
I love this article. While reading the comments I had the following thought. That the RP is somewhat intimidating and exposed as a raw piece of electronics. While you or I have plenty of keyboards and mice around, and no doubt schools do too, what about the people who don't? Has anyone reading this had any experience building something like this? If we could package the cheapest screen with the cheapest mouse with a small case some people might find this a useful package. Seems like a good candidate for a kickstarter project? To be clear I wouldn't intend this as a business, but as a way to contribute to the RP project. (I think I would actually like to buy on e of these as I ony own laptops, so I have to buy all these peripherals anyway when I get my RP)
Several huge industries have been closed down in the last quarter of the 20th century. Governments were adamant that subsidies absolutely were not available to those industries. Many people have lived in relative poverty for years, in areas with very high rates of unemployment.
And then the banks went into meltdown, because of greedy irresponsible sometimes criminal behaviour; and these were the same banks that were talking about the importance of pure market forces and no government intervention; and these banks were propped up at vast expense to the UK taxpayer; at a time when many well loved public services are being cut; and those same greedy bankers (despite being in position when their banks lost billions and needed support from tax-payers) are taking huge bonuses.
Sorry - but I just used a pre-built theme - because if I didn't do that then I would never get time to actually write any blog posts as my own site takes a very low priority for coding time!
Saying that I do like this theme and think the dev did a good job. I have removed that overflow hidden on the body - thanks for the suggestion - so let's hope it's readable now
This article reminds me of the description of the economy of post-collapse america in Snowcrash.
“When it gets down to it — talking trade balances here — once we've brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once things have evened out, they're making cars in Bolivia and microwave ovens in Tadzhikistan and selling them here — once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel — once the Invisible Hand has taken away all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity — y'know what? There's only four things we do better than anyone else:
I studied Mech Eng at college; no-one does that who doesn't want to be an engineer. When I graduated in the mid-90s there were no jobs, so I went into high-tech. But my CV is still floating around, and I occasionally get called by recruiters in engineering. Now I am no rock star, I am paid well (market rate) but not extravagantly so. But these engineering jobs pay a fraction of what I earn, for the equivalent years of experience. And they wonder why no-one wants to do it?
This comes back to the old class system which is still strong in the UK. No matter how educated, an engineer is not "one of us" to the management class, and will never be paid fairly in the old industries, never more than a paper-pushing middle management bureaucrat who went to the "right" school. Only high-tech (enlightened) and The City (where managers are so well paid that they don't feel threatened) pay technical people fairly.
Anyone smart enough to be an engineer - and there are plenty who want to be - is smart enough to not be exploited in that way. And that is why manufacturing died in the UK.