The pi was designed to get kids into computers. The pi is now powerful enough that you can use it as a pc almost. The Pico forces you to engage with it in a different way. Plus the pio and other hardware stuff opens up possibilities for hardware stuff.
The original idea for the Pi was to be a modern BBC Micro. But the Pi turned out to be just a regular PC. A little cheaper, less powerful and ARM. But it doesn't really do much that you couldn't also do with a PC. It doesn't have the magic of turning it on and ending up on a BASIC prompt. It doesn't bring you closer to the hardware. It has all the complexities of a PC.
Meanwhile the Pico is just a regular old MCU. It doesn't have anything that you would associate with a home computer, no keyboard, no way to connect a display, no swappable storage, can't be it's own development platform, etc. It's not something you'd ever want to have as your first computer. You need a real computer to even get any use out of it.
A project like the CommanderX16[1] feels a lot closer to the original goal. As it's just a home computer build modern components.
Firstly, I don’t think the PI’s can be seen to have failed. I’m not close to their use in schools but I do think that for hardware to be useful on this context if needs to engage with the modern computing world and that includes all the ‘messiness’ of Linux etc.
Secondly, I think the Pi Pico W - which can drive a display using one of the cores (see link) - has the potential to be the basis of a system close to what you describe.
https://picockpit.com/raspberry-pi/raspberry-pi-pico-video-o...
I wasn’t aware of the Commander x16 which looks interesting but I was a bit disappointed to see the 6502 based CPU. In the 2020s I think we need to be using a modern architecture and that means Arm or RISC-V.
Finally, the Colour Maximite is also close to the sort of thing you’re talking about.
the big thing you are missing is that PI can be used for electronics and robotics- it has GPIO, SPI and I2C accessible from python, javascript, etc.
this was unheard of previously - if you buy a normal PC or even an industrial SBC, even when the pins are exposed they are often 1.8 volts, which is impossible to work with for a hobbyist. The binsings are usually some unusable C header file.
all the people who could plug in Kinect and make a robot that navigates a 3d environment would be stuck without a pi
It runs python which I suppose is the modern basic, I believe there's a maximite (picomite) Project for running basic on it though. With SD card and screen support
So you can get all this up and running, or you can do it yourself.
Commanderx16 is aiming more for the retro computer crowd. I don't think the pi foundation ever aimed for that.
I think you may be misinterpreting the BBC reference. The BBC was introduced as a computer to teach people about computers, it was widely used in schools etc. That's what the pi was trying to do. There is also the straight to basic element in there too. I don't think they were ever aiming to remake the BBC though
It's similar to Arduino boards. You can use Arduino or PlatformIO if you like, or alternately Micropython or CircuitPython.