If you're considering using a Raspberry Pi as your platform for coding and developing, you may want to reconsider. The thing is slow! And if performance is what you're after, there are better options available.

One of the main drawbacks of the Raspberry Pi is its lack of support for various programming languages and frameworks. While it's true that Mono is available, which means you can write DotNet apps in Visual Studio and run them on RPI, unfortunately, nobody at the Raspberry Foundation or anywhere else has bothered to prepare and offer for download an image of a distribution that includes Mono or Free Pascal and Lazarus.

Good luck with getting your first GUI program up and running without relying on Python! And if you insist on using a graphical front end, be prepared to spend hours downloading and recompiling zillion dependencies. And don't even get me started on the lack of a cross-compiler toolchain - unless you're willing to spend eternity setting one up yourself.

In reality, the only programming languages available for the Raspberry Pi are Python and GCC - and let's just say they aren't exactly what they're cracked up to be in terms of performance. There are reports of users running Quake 3 and using the Raspberry Pi as a media center, but trust me, it's not exactly lightning-fast.

In fact, trying to browse folders or even send an email using your webmail account like Yahoo or Gmail can be a frustrating experience due to the poor performance. And don't even get me started on compiling software - every little step takes an eternity!

So, who is supposed to be using the Raspberry Pi? And how many of you have actually played with one? The whole idea behind this platform was supposed to be to make learning about computers accessible and fun for kids, but I'm not convinced that it's living up to its promise.

In conclusion, if performance is what you're after, there are better options available. But hey, if you're a glutton for punishment and want to spend hours dealing with slow software and poor performance, then the Raspberry Pi might be for you!

How to use a kindle 3