In the UK, the odds are pretty good that students of code performed their programming magic using a big beige box connected to a chunky monitor known as the BBC Microcomputer. Many of those early digital tinkerers went on to careers in computing and it's this pioneering spirit that the BBC is hoping to recapture with the launch of a new education initiative named Make it Digital. At its center is a new micro computing platform called, for the moment, the Micro Bit.

"Just as we did with the BBC Micro in the 1980s, we want to inspire the digital visionaries of the future," said BBC Director-General Tony Hall.

There are a number of strings to the Make it Digital bow. The BBC is partnering with around 50 major organizations, including ARM, the British Computing Society, Freescale, Google, Microsoft and Samsung, to bring about the next digital revolution. It's brought together the expertise of some of those organizations to help create a small programmable hardware device currently named the Micro Bit, developed to help youngsters learn coding and programming basics.