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The pi is almost self contained. The pico is a piece of e-waste without a proper computer to program it. So start wit the pi.

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Could you go a little deeper into what you mean by this? What is a proper computer in this context? How standalone must an electronics device be to be valuable? Should all embedded devices be self-programmable?

I think they're just being snarky with the e-waste thing. The way you program a Pico is by plugging it into the USB port on another computer. Once programmed, it can run on battery power.

It's similar to Arduino boards. You can use Arduino or PlatformIO if you like, or alternately Micropython or CircuitPython.

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