If you've been eyeballing the ultra small (and cheap) Raspberry Pi computer but were concerned that your coding skills might not be up to the task to make the purchase worthwhile, fear no more. University of Cambridge student / summer intern Alex Chadwick has published a set of tutorials designed to teach incoming computer science students how to write basic operating systems on the device. The best part of all is that "Baking Pi - Operating Systems Development" is free for anyone to download and use.
Freshman in the computer science department are being supplied with Raspberry Pi computers as part of their tuition this year and the tutorials are being distributed in addition to regular class material. We are told that Baking Pi is designed for someone with some coding experience but it would be possible to follow the 12-part lesson plan without much prior knowledge - perfect if you're just getting started with coding or want to brush up on some skills you might have long since forgotten.
The series begins with an introduction to operating systems in general before digging deeper and learning how to control the computer's LEDs. From there, students will learn about graphics theory and generating lines, text and random numbers. By the end of the program, students should be able to display computed values and build their own command line interface.
Interested parties can download the lessons and all supporting software from the University of Cambridge's website.