Au contraire, it's perfect for kids. First off (as a parent of two toddlers) it's CHEAP; if a kid manages to destroy it (the little entropy generators kids are), so what - get another. Next, it starts so simple (and CHEAP) that you'll have no qualms about running simple cheap software on it. Then, you'll think nothing of putting money into a computer for any/all TV in the house (I'm waffling about a Mac Mini, but a RasberryPi is a no-brainer). So there's an easy, cheap, nigh-unto-disposable (we're talking kids here) computer that can run powerful stuff yet you'll have no qualms about devoting to a young mind.
BTW: I started programming in 4th grade, with printing terminals and acoustic-coupled dial-up mainframes. A few years later I had a then-equivalent of the RasberryPi: Dad soldered together a $100 Sinclair ZX-80 (likewise, the screen was your TV), and I programmed that thing darn near non-stop. Heck yeah the RasberryPi is "gonna be much use to a primary school student". Can't wait to get my kids going on it.
Sounds idyllic; but what are you going to run? The latest Office suite? Photoshop?
Whatever you answer, the cost dwarfs the device, and swamps its processing power.
So, we're talking about teaching kids to use some special kid-computer with software/tools they will never encounter ever again. What tools are these? A BASIC interpreter?
Why don't you go look up Linux, that way I don't have to list tens of thousands of applications, including dozens of language implementations. If you want someone to learn software development, or computing in general, Linux is a far better starting point than Windows or OS X.
Yeah, yeah. Lots of open-source half-baked projects with no support and incomplete features. Advertised as "photoshop replacement" or "complete IDE" but turns out, missing critical features, crash right and left, won't work on modern hardware etc etc.
Been down that road, burned more times than I can count. I wish it were true, but I don't fool myself into believing it.
You do realize that with the exception of one or two of the IDEs, the "mac dev tools" run or originated on Linux or other similarly now free systems, right?
In 6th grade I learned programming on a $100 computer with 1/1,000th the speed of this and 1/1,000,000th the memory and, yes, a BASIC interpreter.
Load DSL (Damn Small Linux) on this, get gcc set up with a decent minimal text editor, and yes I'll start them with C++ from the ground up - akin to how I started, but with industry standard tools from square 1 and more introduced as they progress.
I bought my first PC when I was eight (at a very discounted price from my parents). I already knew how to do trivial graphics programs in Logo. I had a "100 in one" electronics kit as well, but didn't have anyone to teach me how to read schematics. So, I got the example circuits running by following the numbered wiring sequences printed below the schematic. I learned how to use DOS before that by watching the output of my parents' first computer as it ran through AUTOEXEC.BAT (I was insanely excited when I typed "prompt SpSg" into a command line and the computer actually did something -- later on I figured out that the S should have been a $). By the time I was 13 I was buying scrap computer parts, assembling working computers, and selling them. Don't underestimate the potential of children.
