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Raspberry Pi 3 in easy steps
McGrath M., In Easy Steps Limited, Warwickshire, UK, 2016. 192 pp. Type: Book (978-1-840787-29-0)
Date Reviewed: Aug 11 2017

Raspberry Pi is a single-board computer developed in 2011 by a British charity to promote a different way of teaching computer science in school, away from applications and web design toward programming and experimentation. Raspberry Pi is about the size of a credit card, peripherals like monitor and keyboard not included, and it is rather inexpensive. It became far more popular than anticipated and it is now used not only in schools, but in other environments as well. Meanwhile, several generations and different models of Raspberry Pi have been released, with the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B being the most current version. It comes with onboard WiFi, Bluetooth, and universal serial bus (USB) boot capabilities.

The richly illustrated and colorful presentation of this book, as well as the easy and jargon-free style, indicate that it was written with the young and less experienced reader in mind. In 190 pages, it shows step-by-step how to set up and use the computer, from configuring and commanding the system to building little applications in the Scratch programming environment as well as writing small Python programs. The book’s focus is clearly on software. The Raspberry Pi hardware is only briefly listed at the beginning, and the last chapter (15 pages) describes the input/output (I/O) header pin numbering. Since the Raspberry Pi operating system (OS), Rasbian, is based on the Linux OS, most of the knowledge gathered in this book can also be applied to other Linux-based computer systems. On the other hand, readers already familiar with Linux and Python will not find much new in this book.

The idea behind Raspberry Pi is “to put the power of digital making into the hands of people all over the world” [1]. It is a kind of revival of the old days of home computers in the 1980s and 1990s. However, the hardware and software of home computers was very simple even when compared to Raspberry Pi. Using assembler languages, teenagers and computer enthusiasts could interact with the system much more directly than what is shown in this book. But I think the authors manage very well to quicken the appetite of young readers and to encourage them to dig deeper into the system on their own.

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Reviewer:  Klaus Galensa Review #: CR145482 (1710-0643)
1) Philbin, C. A. The Raspberry Pi Foundation’s Digital Making Curriculum. Raspberry Pi Foundation, https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/digital-making-curriculum/ (08/03/2017).
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