Objective C's form of punctuation abuse isn't any higher a barrier than C++'s forms of punctuation abuse. In fact, it has less total weird syntax. Reports are that Objective C stops looking obscure to most programmers after about 2 weeks of use, even if they were previously biased towards C++ or Java like syntax.

Half the fun of explaining the Cray 1 during museum tours was comparing its cycle time to the time it took light from the nearby ceiling spotlight to hit the Cray. At 33 MHz that would require a really tall room.

The problem with using embedded microcontrollers for this tutorial purpose is that they are usually incomplete slave devices, and thus the experience is incomplete and misleading. Rarely did people ever do or teach development completely on those embedded machines themselves (including compiling compilers, the OS itself, etc. on that microcomputer itself), as people did with old tube mainframes, IBM 360s, PDP-11s, and the like. In addition, some of the newer 8-bit microcontrollers are actually a lot faster than these vintage machines.

Not only handhelds. There's a good chance your Wintel laptop or desktop PC might have one hidden in its disk controller or wifi chipset as well.

If you don't hire that second team and have them compete internally, your competition might just hire those other programmers, compete with your company, and potentially take all your business away. There will be competition, whether from within or without. You choose.

The iTunes store has been featuring more and more VNC and RDP apps lately, probably pointing in the direction of how they'd like this particular type of user experience implemented.

Organized labor did try running China a few years back. It was called the Cultural Revolution. Millions died. A lot more than the current suicide rate.

Because that's what they would still be part of if they weren't working.

And how does that compare to the number of murders of protestant european-descent heterosexual white males over the age of 30 during the same time period? What would be the "fair" non-prejudicial ratio?

Just the opposite. Far more kids were interested in science and programming back in the days when the chemistry set could burn or blow your fingers off, and the use of unprotected GOTO's, peeks, poke, and global variables could crash your computer a zillion different ways. Choosing safety has taken all the fun out of play.

Teach the kid how to program in BASIC. Bill Gates and Woz can be his role models. What teenage kid has heard of or wants to be Djiskstra?

What they can plead is being the victim of fraud. They were given "stolen" goods (a binary that didn't comply with either the GPL license or the SDK agreement). If they pull the app and eject the developer who committed this fraud, what would a court realistically require in addition? Decompile the app to discover the actual source to the exact build they were given? Not likely.

Get a $300 el-cheapo netbook, and let them configure it however they want. Use it for nothing else. And/or ask them to set up a VM that you can securely RDP into (VPN, VMWare View or Citrix), so there's no data on your remote PC/laptop/mobile phone, just pixels. Or both: have them buy you a thin client netbook.

If you want to be tricky, image the HD of the el-cheapo netbook after they set it up, and run it inside a VM on your personal PC. Note that this may or may not comply with their legal restrictions.

If you go by the metric that, in the typical large project, the resulting product ends up with 10 to 100 "lines of code" per person per day, hey, most programmer's probably took about 15 minutes to type that in if you exclude all thinking (reading, studying, daydreaming while unconsciously problem solving, etc.) and meeting time.

If that gardener (or web consultant, whatever...) leaves behind a better garden and less mess than any alternative available gardeners for the same billed hours, absolutely. Or if he charges less than half as much per hour and I end up paying him less for his 20 billed hours than any alternative gardener's 10 hours, and my garden looks the same after either, why not?

Only deploy thin clients or thin client software to users. With some thin clients, you can even forward USB drive mounts to the VM. Partition your VMs into isolated groups, some with internet connections, others completely locked down. Just assume that any VM open to the net or that any user has used for web browsing, etc., is compromised. Take them offline for a full scan and reimage per login, or at least daily.