You should know that vscode is not open-source nor free software. I see a lot of misinformation in this article. To be able to bring that unadulterated joy of using ‘grown-up tools’ to our young learners is priceless.

I see this with my seven-year-old daughter, seeing her excitement that I use Microsoft Teams for work, the same as she uses for her virtual schooling (she’s even offered to teach me how to use it if I get stuck).

It also makes it easier when Mum has to inevitably help with unblocking the issues that always come up with learners.Īs a young child it was mind-blowing when my Dad brought home a work PC so he could write reports and I could use it to write up my school work – I was using what Dad used at work, making me feel important. Imagine the joy of a 10-year-old coding Python using VS Code on their Raspberry Pi plugged into the family TV, then seeing their Mum working from home coding Python in exactly the same tool on her work laptop as part of her job as an AI engineer or data scientist. The second reason is to me the most important - it allows kids to share the same development environment as their grown-ups. Combine this with the new Raspberry Pi 400 and you have an all-in-one solution to learning to code, reminiscent of my ZX Spectrum of decades ago, but so much more powerful. They can now do both in the same application, reducing the cognitive load – they only have to learn one tool, one debugger, one setup.

I see kids learning Python at school using one tool, then learning web development in an after-school coding club with a different tool. I can take my $35 computer, plug it into a keyboard and mouse, connect a monitor and a TV and code in a wide range of languages from the same place. There are already some great editors, but nothing of the calibre of VS Code. And yes - I am writing this right now on a Raspberry Pi 400 running VS Code! Why am I so excited about this?įirstly, it brings an exceptional developer tool to Raspberry Pi. As well as supporting Debian Linux on 圆4, there are now builds for ARM and ARM64 – both of which can run on Raspberry Pi OS (the ARM build on Raspberry Pi OS, the ARM64 on the beta of the 64-bit Raspberry Pi OS). I’ve been hoping for years VS Code would come to Raspberry Pi, and finally it’s here.

Visual studio code microsoft