Why should you want a Pi. ?

The Raspberry Pi is probably the most hyped single board computer ever. This $35 Linux computer is selling so fast that they just cannot produce them fast enough to meet the demand. In the week of their introduction the orders were up to 700 units per second ! And why ? What's so special about this little board that makes it so desirable ? Not much actually, and I think 90% of the sales is a kind of  mass hysteria that just pops up once in a while.
Lets look at the original goal: to get young people interested in computer programming in a way the Commodore 64 and ZX-81 did so many years ago. Which is a romantic dream of some men who grew up in this era and think they can transfer their youth to the present.
But the world has changed. Twenty years ago these home computers were the only way you could ever get close or even touch a programmable device. 

Starting a Linux based PC is not easy and requires some real skills. Indeed similar to loading and starting a program on a Commodore 64 or a TRS-80 from your tape-drive or double sided floppy. But there was a compelling reason for 10 year olds to learn these cryptic commands: it was the only way to load a COMPUTER GAME !. If you read the interviews with the all these successful programmers in ' Halcyon Days' you will notice that they all started programming because they wanted to create or play their favourite game. But with about every imaginable game available for free or for a few dollars in the app store this urge definitely no longer exists. I'm sure at least 80% of the Pi's sold so far  will just be used as a cheap mediabox.
Nevertheless, I could not resist to it either so I ordered one. And here I'll try to write down my experiences. Let's see if I can take it a little further than the blinking LED example...