FWIW if you are operating on an extremely small budget and want to do something like this, you can definitely hit up your local thrift shops (or craigslist) for very cheap used monitors. I know that doesn't get you the Pi systems, but new monitors can be quite pricy.
FWIW you can probably find a hell of a lot ex office PCs for free
I do admire the raspberry pi project for their work, but for just programming simple python projects, any 15 year old core 2 duo will work and people can't get rid of them fast enough
Yeah but then you're in the "manage a bunch of really old hardware" business.
RasPi have that consistency factor and the "game boy" factor of kinda being able to throw one against a wall and for it to work.
It's not the best programming experience but at least it'll be consistent. (Part of this is a Python problem tho tbh. Every Django Girls thing is half "go through the code" and half "try to figure out what weird situation your computer is in", even for Macs)
The fact that real programming is a mess isn't like... important! It's entirely incidental and almost entirely due to this kind of attitude of "well I got it working on my machine" that slows down making real progress
Not to mention that all this futzing around is usually indicative of leaky abstractions up the wazoo.
There are hard things in programming, sometimes. It's hard to write iterative quick sort without introducing off-by-one bugs. But most shit is easy, and a lot of hardness is around just busted tooling.
The ones who get bit by the programming bug have their whole lives to be annoyed by the hassles of computer ownership, upgrades, etc.
But most won’t keep programming, so I think it’s smart to at least keep this class focused on its purpose, which isn’t to see who can get most frustrated by their decade old Dell tower.
Let’s say there are a dozen kids in the class. The library provided the monitors. How does the volunteer teacher get a dozen towers to and from the library? What do they do with a dozen towers in between classes? Would this be easier or harder with a dozen Pi 400s?
This is the real strength of the Pi 400 for this application: sure you could do it all cheaper with used office hardware, but it turns this "just works" intro class into a full advanced IT course (or a full-time IT job for the volunteer teacher).
If you want the RPi look and feel &/| if you happen to have said PCs lying around &/| buying brand-new Pi's is not an option, you can get Raspberry Pi OS for x86.
Yeah it is kind of annoying that the language that's going to be best for instructing kids/beginners has such a terrible ecosystem that will put kids in such frustrating PITA positions getting the environment right.
Don't forget the fact that standard PCs are very well-documented too. Instead of teaching on proprietary barely-documented systems, choose one that has decades of documentation and a huge software/hardware ecosystem.
Off lease refurbishers generally have old 1440x900 monitors in bulk, although in COVID world they're pretty picked over as everybody working remote has grabbed one or two.
