What is Raspberry Pi? Is it Helpful for Programming?

The Raspberry Pi’s latest released was on March 14, 2018. It is a series of small single-board computers that was developed to promote the teaching of basic computer science in schools and in developing countries.

Unfortunately, it does not include peripherals like keyboards, mice, and cases, however, some accessories have been included in several official and unofficial bundles. It supports various operating systems such as 9front, Android Things, Arch Linux ARM, CentOS, Debian, Fedora, FreeBSD, Freedombox, Gentoo Linux, Kali Linux, Kano, NetBSD, and others.

What is Raspberry PI?

Raspberry Pi is a credit-card-sized computer that plugs into your TV and a keyboard. It is like a little computer which can be used in electronic projects, and for many of the things that your desktop PC does, like spreadsheets, word processing, browsing the internet, playing games and play high-definition video as well.

Raspberry Pi Board

Raspberry Pi is a capable device that enables people of all ages to explore computing and also to learn how to program in languages such as Scratch and Python. It has the ability to interact with the outside world. It has been used in a wide array of digital maker projects from music machines and parent detectors to weather stations and tweeting birdhouses with infrared cameras. Name it and it does it.

Quick History of Raspberry Pi

There are several generations of Raspberry Pis that have been released over time. It features a Broadcom system on a chip with an integrated ARM compatible central processing unit and an on-chip graphics processing unit.

• In 2012, Raspberry Pi 1 Model B was released followed by Model A.
• In 2014, Raspberry Pi 1 Model B+ was released, it is a board with the improved design.
• These boards are approximately credit-card sized and represent the standard mainline form-factor.
• Improved A+ and B+ models were released a year later.
• “Compute Module” was released in April 2014 for embedded applications.
• Raspberry Pi 2 which added more RAM was released in February 2015.
• In November 2015, Raspberry Pi Zero with smaller size and reduced input/output and general-purpose input/output capabilities was released.
• On February 2017, the Raspberry Pi Zero W was launched, with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth capabilities.
• On January 2018, the Raspberry Pi Zero WH was launched. It is the same version of the Zero W with pre-soldered GPIO headers.

Is Raspberry Pi good for programming?

Raspberry Pi is better if you want to learn to program compared with a normal computer. It is powerful enough to run as a small Linux server. Although Raspberry Pis were not designed to host large servers, you can still use it by installing a web server and relational database as well as server web-based content without a problem. This is for someone who is new to programming and/or Linux because it allows you to develop directly on the Raspberry Pi or on your main machine and quickly drop files onto your server using SFTP.

Raspberry Pi is really an educational device which is meant for hobbyists and aspiring youths to learn about programming. Benefits of using the Raspberry Pi includes:

1. Size. It is relatively small, you don’t need a computer desk or anything.
2. It’s quiet, you don’t have to worry about noise at all.
3. In learning hardware + software integration, you can get an Arduino setup with a Pi as well.

Raspberry Pi is a great cheap option that can give you freedom from worrying about corrupting your main computer or breaking something that you need to spend time on fixing. For an instance, you mess up, you can always flash the SD card back to a fresh install.

Getting a Raspberry Pi does not require an in-depth experience in programming because it is where you get that experience. You can learn to program on the pi as it was designed for that very purpose thus, it is made as an education tool for people to get started and learn about these things.

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