>The Pi Foundation has done a good job of persuading everyone [that "the Pi is really about teaching kids to code"], but I'm left with a nagging suspicion that a computer designed for kids from the ground up would look very different. //
http://www.raspberrypi.org/about/ says that they designed it to enable kids to access a cheap platform on which it would be easy to code and that they considered the multimedia capabilities a good hook.
Price was clearly a major factor in making the RPi accessible to all [UK] kids. Their inspiration was in part the BBC Micro series - which were certainly not inexpensive.
RPi is cheaper than a second-hand Nintendo DS.
In short, as I understood it, the RPi was about removing the cost barrier to kids having their own system on which to code and hack both hardware and software.
http://www.raspberrypi.org/about/ says that they designed it to enable kids to access a cheap platform on which it would be easy to code and that they considered the multimedia capabilities a good hook.
Price was clearly a major factor in making the RPi accessible to all [UK] kids. Their inspiration was in part the BBC Micro series - which were certainly not inexpensive.
RPi is cheaper than a second-hand Nintendo DS.
In short, as I understood it, the RPi was about removing the cost barrier to kids having their own system on which to code and hack both hardware and software.