Exactly. The people who scoff at this unit and demand a faster SoC and other features for their project are completely missing the point. This isn’t for those people. This is for making computing exciting and interesting at an affordable price point that can be plugged into a TV or cheap monitor and comes with a big ecosystem of support.

That was the prime directive of the Raspberry Pi foundation all along: they wanted to recreate the BBC Micro experience. Back in its heyday, it was both purchasable and widely installed in schools, and the BBC ran educational television shows about computing. This is also why Raapbian ships with programming tools set up out of the box.

It was kind of an accident that the Raspberry Pi also became the de facto standard single-board computer for hobby electronics projects.

Actually the accident is more that it became so successful for embedded computers in professional environments (factories, logistics etc.). This contributed to the lack of availability around the COVID crisis and opened opportunities for competitors to appear and gain rapid market share.