Tag Archives: Programming Languages

A Slice Of Raspberry Pi



Image Couresty of The Raspberry Pi Foundation

The long-awaited U.S. release of Raspberry Pi hit snag this month when the folks behind the pint-sized PC (credit card-sized, actually) realized the units were manufactured with non-magnetic jacks. “No magnetics means no network connection,” a blog post stated on the Raspberry Pi site earlier this month.

Tech folks have been buzzing about this British non-profit start-up (The Raspberry Pi Foundation is a UK registered charity) since it announced it was taking pre-orders for its Raspberry Pi and demand outstripped supply within minutes. Originally designed to provide a cheap, versatile and powerful little PC for young people to learn programming with, Raspberry Pi has instead captured attention from the entire programming world – many of whom (myself included) are waitlisted for the $25 to $35 dollar machine (probably more like $50 after taxes/shipping).

The draw is threefold – it’s inexpensive, versatile and small. Essentially, it’s a little Linux machine on a RM11-based Broadbom BCM2835 200MHz ARM processor with up to 256MB of SDRAM, composite and HDMI outputs, USB and memory card slots. No case, no bells, whistles, etc. They have a pretty extensive FAQ – it will answer all of your technical inquiries and then some.

Sounds pretty cool – a neat little PC that programmers both novice and pro can push and pull in many directions. The Raspberry Pi team has already taken to testing this little wallet-sized computer to the max, like running Quake 3 on it with minimal issues.

Outside of the technical impressiveness and the attractively cheap price, it’s the goal of this project that deserves the most respect. From the Raspberry Pi team – “We want to see cheap, accessible, programmable computers everywhere; we actively encourage other companies to clone what we’re doing. We want to break the paradigm where without spending hundreds of pounds on a PC, families can’t use the internet. We want owning a truly personal computer to be normal for children. We think that 2012 is going to be a very exciting year.”

They’ve got the buzz. They’ve got the mission. Now, all they need is magnetic jacks. Stay tuned.


An Infographic Look at the History of Computer Languages



It’s amazing and surprising how long some computer languages have actually been around.  Beginning way back in 1957 with Fortran, which is still in use at the National Weather Service and moving to Cobol in 1959, which is used by the united States Postal Service.

The graphic below is courtesy of Rack Space.  It cover the history of the most popular programming languages from the aforementioned Fortran and Cobol right up through Ruby on Rails.  It also give a very brief bit of information about each and some information about who has implemented them.  At the bottom, you will find a chart that illustrates the popularity of each language.  It’s a fascinating snapshot that I found a few surprises in.  Did you know Skype was written in Pascal?  Or, that C++ is the most popular programming language ever?  Or, that PHP (the backbone of many web 2.0 sites) has been around since 1995?  It’s all in the infographic below.