It was 1987 when I first got introduced to the BBC Micro computers, it seems our school got two with help from British Council. It was fascinating beyond imagination for someone who thought seven segment Casio LED calculators were so cool. That was also the first introduction to programming with Logo and BASIC.

An article this week in Computerworld reminded me of those days. BBC has now finalized the design of BBC micro:bit, a tiny computer that they will give to 1 million children in British schools. The good part is that hardware will be open source, which means other manufacturers can adapt it or re-use it.

The BBC micro:bit is smaller than a Raspberry Pi and has integrated LED and connect to various other devices including the Pi, Arduino and more.

Good on you BBC for introducing computing to kids, and good on you for keeping it open source!