Gadgetory

hello there my name is Kerry Sims from Andrew authority now if you want to get into programming or you want to encourage a young person to get into programming then maybe the micro bit is a good entry point so what is it and how does it work well let's find out history during the late 1980s in the early 1990s there was a thing called the home micro revolution where computers like the Commodore 64 the Sinclair ZX Spectrum and of course the BBC micro found their ways into the homes of lots of young people who got into things like gaming and things like that but it also gave them an entry point into understanding computing in general and many many people from that point including myself went on to careers in computing and software engineers or as other type of IT related jobs and actually that did actually spur on a whole growth at university level of entrants people coming in to study computer science related courses at university however once we got into the PC era then and the games console era we think that the PlayStation then that kind of drive to get into IT kind of dropped down and in fact lots of the universities saw them the number of requests for people to join computer science courses actually went down significantly and there have been a couple of attempts to boost up that interest again amongst young people to get into computing one of course is the Raspberry Pi and the other is the micro bit now earlier on I mentioned the BBC micro and this is actually called the BBC micro bit and that's completely intentional because this is sponsored by the British Broadcasting Corporation who have worked with arm and with several other partners to bring this device to a whole generation of young people in fact have been given away free to a whole year group in the UK across the whole UK for free to the teachers and in the classroom they can learn about programming using one of these but of course they're also for sale you can buy one you can use it yourself you can gift it to somebody and it's a great entry point into getting into programming because it's small it's easy to use doesn't take much to start getting some lights flashing to write your first programs so let's have a deeper look so what is the micro bit well basically it's a very small ball that's got at its heart and arm microcontroller the cortex n0 and it's also got a 25 LEDs that act as a kind of a rudimentary display but you can scroll words and messages across it's got accelerometer so if you detect tilting and movement it's got a compass and it's got bluetooth and it's got two buttons so that you can interact with the users now you don't need a television to use you don't need a monitor you don't need a keyboard you don't need a mouse you just need to be on a PC that you can program it on and then once you've programmed it the program stays in flash memory and it can be put into any kind of project from simple kind of you know badges all the way up to complicated robot systems powered by a simple battery setup and once it's flat it runs in there all the time so the programming done on a PC and then you flash it over and you run the program every time it starts up it runs the same program so it's really easy to get into programming it so how do you program it well basically there are four different programming environments available probably the easiest for the youngest people is a blocks system that there are two ideas that Armour partnered with different people including Microsoft to provide these kind of blocks and the blocks you can drag them out from a collection of blocks and they do things like set variables do a loop test a condition and it's all built in size it's very visual for people to see how these programs are put together now behind the block system is JavaScript code JavaScript is very very popular on the web and those blocks are converted directly into JavaScript effect inside some of the editors like the maps of editor you can switch between the block of you and the JavaScript view and you can see what the blocks are doing in JavaScript which is a great way to learn the fundamentals of JavaScript and if you want to then switch over to JavaScript if you write a fairly simple program it can actually be converted back into blocks if you start writing more complicated programming the block system just is left behind but you can just keep on writing some very complicated JavaScript there now the only downside of the JavaScript system is that because there are two separate ID what the coals that you use to do things like control the LEDs or interrogate the accelerometer or see if there's been a button press they're actually different on both systems so there's not a standard JavaScript API that would means you can write it in one environment and the other once you pick an environment you need to stay in that environment now besides blocks in JavaScript you can also write programs for micro bit using micro Python now Python is again is a very very popular programming language it's got a whole bunch of users out there and micro Python is kind of a subset that's designed to run on microcontrollers unlike the other environments you write the program on a PC and then you flash it over onto the micro bit and your Python program is then running and the final way that you can write programs for microvidia is using C and C++ and that's because the micro bit actually uses armed embed system now arms embed OS is basically their way of providing an operating system and all the tools you need to build products based on microcontrollers based on armed microcontrollers and basically it's all open source so you can basically get hold of all of this code all of these libraries and all the compilers and tools that you need to build an Internet of Things product or a microcontroller product of which the micro bit is one of them and that basically means if you go over to the embedded development environment you can add a micro bit board and then you can start writing C code and that C code will then just get flashed on to the controller and it will start running so that you've got blocks you've got JavaScript you've got micro Python you've got senior C++ a really great way to get into programming from all different levels of experience now to test out the micro Vic what I thought is I've wrote a program that simulates an electronic dice you shake the micro bit and it comes up on the display with a number between 1 and 6 and I've written that using blocks using javascript using micro Python and using C now if you've got over to Android ROM website you'll see all four programs there and how I did and basically the blocks is the easiest so really is a good way to get into programming the micro Python and the JavaScript I reckon around the same level of difficulty and the C one is a bit more calm because you really are dealing with some low-level events some low-level reading of the accelerometer which is a bit more complicated than what you get in the higher-level languages but on all four platforms it's very easy to write programs and it was easy to take that idea and port it across all four environments so it really is a good way to learn about these different setups and so there you have it my review of the BBC micro bit of course it's made in conjunction with the BBC in conjunction with arm and with a whole host of partners now of course there are other alternative like the Raspberry Pi in the Raspberry Pi zero however this really is almost foolproof and does offer a great way to get into programming it also makes a great gift around the holiday time or around someone's birthday to get them into programming so I really do wholeheartedly recommend my own children are really quite keen to start playing with this now that the review is finished well my name's Gary Sims from an authority I hope you enjoyed this video if you did please do give it a thumbs up also don't forget to subscribe to hand-draw authorities youtube channel please do download the Enduro thority app because that will give you access to all of our news and features directly on your mobile phone and last but not least don't forget to go over to Android Authority comm because we are your source for all things one final thing if my voice sounds a bit croak it's because unfortunately I've caught a cold so sorry about that