Should I buy a Raspberry Pi

[Kangaroo]

Hi guys, I have been looking at buying one of these but not sure if I should.
I have tried coding in the past and have never been good at it.
The coding language I tried was Pascal, I could code some stuff in it but it was very basic.

Do you think I will be able to learn to code with this? Or will my time be better spent learning to code elsewhere?
To me the community looks great and that's what really attracted me

Thanks guys.

[DougieLawson]

The RPi is an excellent development system. The preferred language is python (because nobody writes Pascal). You can get a pascal compiler if you really insist.

There's lots you can do with the excellent HDMI graphics, PiCam and above all with twiddling the GPIO pins to make hardware things happen.

It's only £35 and if you don't get on with it you'll get something back by selling it on eBay.

[Kangaroo]

The RPi is an excellent development system. The preferred language is python (because nobody writes Pascal). You can get a pascal compiler if you really insist.

There's lots you can do with the excellent HDMI graphics, PiCam and above all with twiddling the GPIO pins to make hardware things happen.

It's only £35 and if you don't get on with it you'll get something back by selling it on eBay.

Definitely buying it now that I find out it ships with Java pre-installed.
http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/4920

[DougieLawson]

Definitely buying it now that I find out it ships with Java pre-installed.
http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/4920

That abomination wouldn't ever persuade me to buy anything. The diagnostics you get from the failure of a Java program are dire in the extreme. It's small wonder that Java gets the reputation of "write once, debug everywhere".

[Kangaroo]

Definitely buying it now that I find out it ships with Java pre-installed.
http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/4920

That abomination wouldn't ever persuade me to buy anything. The diagnostics you get from the failure of a Java program are dire in the extreme. It's small wonder that Java gets the reputation of "write once, debug everywhere".

Learning it to make my own bots for a game called Runescape :p

[JoeDaStudd]

Definitely buying it now that I find out it ships with Java pre-installed.
http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/4920

That abomination wouldn't ever persuade me to buy anything. The diagnostics you get from the failure of a Java program are dire in the extreme. It's small wonder that Java gets the reputation of "write once, debug everywhere".

Learning it to make my own bots for a game called Runescape :p

I thought bots where against the T&C's of Runescape or did they change something recently?

As for the original question its worth having a RasPi for projects and tinker with imo.

[redhawk]

The preferred language is python (because nobody writes Pascal).

Well I code in Pascal I've even published programs written in Pascal too so as far I'm concerned it's not a dead language as some people would like to think.
I could use #define to mask an entire C++ source code to give it 99.9% look and fell like Pascal source code.
Perverted idea I know but it just proves the point that C and Pascal may look different but really they they're similar with different syntax and no better than one other.

As to the original question "Should I buy a Raspberry Pi" well it's not like buying one is going to put a serious dent in your wallet.
If all you want to do is write Pascal programs they you don't need a Pi, if you're also thinking about running web servers, proxy, streaming 1080p videos to your flat screen TV then buy one.

Richard S.

[Richard-TX]

I would find a simple use for your Rpi. An internet radio is one that seems popular. Then you can get started with many different things. Some people are natural programmers. Others are application integrators and still others are system administrators.

[Raspruss]

I bought one, so my opinion is necessarily biased one way or the other, not to mention THIS site is kinda...you know...biased somewhat, too.

As such, you might want to contemplate your navel about what you want to do with such a thing, then head over to a generic site like element14 and see what are the various things they talk about, theoretically in an unbiased manner; there are more options than a Pi at similar price points: http://www.element14.com/community/comm ... -topgroups

[Kangaroo]

I thought bots where against the T&C's of Runescape or did they change something recently?

As for the original question its worth having a RasPi for projects and tinker with imo.

Yeah they are illegal to use, but not coding them.

[Kangaroo]

I bought one, so my opinion is necessarily biased one way or the other, not to mention THIS site is kinda...you know...biased somewhat, too.

As such, you might want to contemplate your navel about what you want to do with such a thing, then head over to a generic site like element14 and see what are the various things they talk about, theoretically in an unbiased manner; there are more options than a Pi at similar price points: http://www.element14.com/community/comm ... -topgroups

I was looking at the PandoBoard, but the Raspberry Pi looks much more user friendly and more documentation/tutorials for it.
I bought the Model B, my teacher has model A. So I think mine is better, with power etc.

[Raspruss]

I was looking at the PandoBoard, but the Raspberry Pi looks much more user friendly

Except for the BeagleBoard I don't know anything about the other boards on that page, however in response to your post I looked over the Pandaboard docs...they do NOT mention software! Yikes! There's a large user manual that is all hardware-oriented and some lip service is given to a couple "development tools", but there is no mention of OS or anything approaching that.

It for sure looks like just a powerful hardware platform that you are none-the-less on your own with.

I prefer the Raspberry approach with complete OS, etc (as the BeagleBoard and others have, too).

====

BTW - the Raspberry Pi Version B has MUCH more power in it than my entire graduate school image processing lab had with its PDP11/45 - we had 256KBytes core memory (split I/D) and a massive 5MByte hard disk. Oh yeah, the camera module on the Pi could run circles over the image acquisition hardware we had (512x512 max - no WAY to do video just single shot).

[jamesh]

I bought one, so my opinion is necessarily biased one way or the other, not to mention THIS site is kinda...you know...biased somewhat, too.

As such, you might want to contemplate your navel about what you want to do with such a thing, then head over to a generic site like element14 and see what are the various things they talk about, theoretically in an unbiased manner; there are more options than a Pi at similar price points: http://www.element14.com/community/comm ... -topgroups

I would caution that the Element 14 forums may not be the unbiased forums one would hope for. There are a number of people on there who were banned from here in the early days for various misdemeanour's, and that has tended to influence their commentary, as tends to happen in these circumstances. But feel free to investigate, there is lots of good stuff there as well. Fortunately we get very very few people here now that need to be banned. Only one or two (excluding spammers) in the last year or so.

Admittedly, we are biased here as well. But then, that is to be expected!

[Raspruss]

I would caution that the Element 14 forums may not be the unbiased forums one would hope for.

Being a newbie here I know nothing about this - however, Element14 is a major seller of the Raspberry product line and, on its home page, has numerous references to the Raspberry Pi so can't be THAT bad a source of "unbiased" opinion (I admittedly wasn't referencing the forums when I said "unbiased source" since I haven't read any element14 forums. I was just referring to the fact that they had pages and pages of information about the plethora of single-board computers that are currently available).