There are lots of project ideas and I'm sure you can come up with
plenty more. But some popular uses include
- a small web-server (mine does light Python/Django hosting and has a
small sqlite database, but can run a small Postgres or MySQL
instance)
- a low-power file-server/backup/git machine for your network
- a media server or media center
- a mail server
- a security setup with a camera to monitor an area and notify you of
activity
- if you don't run Linux or a BSD elsewhere, you can SSH into it for
BSD/Linux experience without needing to dual-boot or format your
daily driver
- depending on your proficiency with hardware (I'm a bit of a klutz
but others on this list are more savvy), you can hook up all sorts
of electronics to it and drive them via software.
I don't know how comfortable you already are at the command-line. If
you can already find your way around at the command-line, then
bash-scripting is a nice starter programming language just to help
you automate things you do frequently. But it's well worth learning
how to use before you venture into programming.
The Pi supports an abundance of freely available languages, so I'd
test-drive a couple and see what fits you best. I'm biased toward
Python as it fits my brain and is what I do for my day-job. But know
that some people have difficulty with the significant-whitespace
aspect. So you might prefer Lua (small, lightweight, easy to hold in
your head) or Ruby. Or if you like, you can kick the tires on
Erlang, Elixer, Perl, Node/JavaScript, Java, Rust, Go, Lisp, Closure,
Haskell, C, C++, Pascal, PHP, Pike, TCL, or Fortran or a gazillion
other languages. I happen to also like Lua & Erlang from that list.
But play with some example code and see which works best for you.
The only one I'd advise against is PHP: even though it's easy to get
started using for web development, it has so many pitfalls and
gotchas that I declare it a bit dangerous even for a seasoned
developer (and I've been writing code since the early 80s).
For all of them, you only need the language runtime/compiler and a
text-editor. I'm a vi/vim/ed sort of guy, but some folks like nano
or emacs while others like GUI text editors. Again, lots of options
and many are free, so use what works for you. It's also helpful to
learn a bit of version-control, whether git, subversion, or
mercurial. But that's not essential to start off.
I hope this gives you some direction and that you have a blast
because I certainly do. (grins)
-tim
On January 21, 2018, Matthew Cabraja wrote:
hi list===========================================================
i have a raspberry pi 2 I purchased two years ago. I have the image
from the website running on it. I was wondering if any of you could
give suggestions on uses for it. I want to use it to learn
programming and create fun projects. I have little to no knowledge
of programming but i would like to learn using the raspberry pi. i
don’t know where to start so any help would be appreciated. thanks
matt PS i was thinking python might be a good starting language if
there is another language I should look at let me
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