Raspberry Pi or other kit for beginner coder, OR subscription to Lovable or Bolt?
When my kids were really young, I had subscriptions to things for them like Kodable and @Tynker My oldest daughter had fun trying out the free Codemonster page, and then moved on to building her own games. I think she did stuff in Swift playground etc. then I recently shared @Lovable and @bolt.new with her so she's excited about that, but she's also asked for a @Raspberry Pi 5 kit.
For those more tecchy folks in this community, is a Raspberry Pi kit a good investment? (she's about to turn 11). Or should I get her a paid subscription to one of the AI coders instead so she can just vibe code things to her delight? Or are there other resources folks recommend, e.g. coding classes where she'll get more guidance to build something on her own?
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The Raspberry Pi is a fantastic bit of kit! Even if she doesn't decide to use it for coding, you could as a family use it as a media server, create a retro arcade machine or use it with external headers that can monitor weather, create wildlife cameras, ambient lighting. Absolutely tonnes of tutorials out there, decent magazines with walkthroughs.
If you look in your local area, you might even find after school clubs that specialise in Raspberry Pi / Scratch or Python game programming for her age.
I wish I'd had a Pi when I was that age!
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@xelopixel Thank you! We just gifted her the Raspberry Pi kit this weekend and as soon as she woke up, she got to building and set it up. She's already talking about building her own Minecraft server haha. I will see if there are any after school clubs in the area - great suggestion, thanks!