On 28/06/19 7:29 AM, tim Rowledge wrote:
>> I find the emergence of boards with Micro Python or Lua out of the box is more inline with the original RPi mission. The gap between Arduinos and the old RPis are being filled in by these boards.
> 
> There are good uses for all of these options. Microcontrollers such as Arduino are useful for tiny stuff. Bigger devices like the ESP8266/32 move up the performance  curve and provide wifi - often cheaper than the Arduino boards. Pi are real computers; remember even a Pi Zero is a gigahertz 32bit cpu with hardware array floating point that would have crushed a high end workstation not so very long ago. The Pi4 is benchmarking well into base x86 desktop machine, i5 etc. And it's always good to remember that an x86 is a waste of perfectly good sand.
> 
> Be happy to have so many options, so cheap, so flexible, so powerful, so available.
Tim,

My disappointment is not about the specs but their positioning.
Every release prior to RPi 4 was bang on target with respect to their 
mission of broadening access to computing kits to students. This was 
evident in the sharp adoption curve globally. RPi 4 seems to move away 
from that mission - moving towards the top of the demand pyramid rather 
than bottom.

Also, x86 boards are two-in-ones - heater and computer - well suited for 
colder climes ;-).

Regards .. Subbu