Well, the RPis (Raspberry Pi computers) are shipping now. I haven't got mine yet, but I'm hoping I'll be getting my notice to order soon.
At this point there is a lot of activity on the forums at http://www.raspberrypi.org and among the things that have already been accomplished are getting Apache, MySQL, and the GD (libgd) running on the RPi and hooking it to the internet. Since Perl is already installed on the linux OS the RPi is a great beginners platform to learn on. From what I've gathered over there, CPAN works, there are some issues, but some successes too. That's some of the good news.... The bad news is that almost no one is doing much with perl over there. There are 19,459 members on that forum and it's only been open for a few months. There is me and one other guy talking perl there. Here's some more good news... There are 80,000 people waiting to get their RPi right now, and there are commercially made devices like it being introduced as well that are more powerful than the RPi. It would seem to me that perl developers would be all over the potential of these devices for delivering embedded apps to their clients. It's hard to imagine, but true that we can now install a web based app on a $35 piece of hardware and ship it as a plug-n-play product. Either plug it in to your network, or hook a mouse/keyboard/monitor to it and use it as a stand alone device. We can also configure an OS to run our software and let users download it or ship it on an SD card to plug into a RPi. Amazing! The market for educational products, like books, hardware and software, robotics and automation, and even seminars on how to use them, would seem to have potential too, and not just for kids and schools, but for commercial products. I was looking at Dancer.pm this past week. It's cool as can be, nice MVC layout, built-in web server, installed easy (it was installed by the "other guy" on the forums and lightly tested already on his RPi), and it could be a great starting point for beginners to learn perl and be productive in the process. For that to happen though, the documentation would have to be written with the beginner in mind. To be honest, I think Selena Sol did that better than just about anyone. Yeah, the code wasn't the best, but his method of teaching people how it worked and how to use it was effective. And it was fun to learn it too, it did something when you got it running, and you didn't have to learn a bunch of stuff that you didn't need to know to get it running. You only had to learn what you needed to know to be productive. The RPi gives the perl community the opportunity to grow with the markets these devices will create and serve, which I think will be huge. I lack the credentials to lead the Perl community there, but I've been feeling the need to point out what's going on there and urge others to get involved. Kindest Regards, Bill Stephenson -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: beginners-unsubscr...@perl.org For additional commands, e-mail: beginners-h...@perl.org http://learn.perl.org/
