DH again (bit long sorry)
"Coding's probably not too hard to pick up again if you've done it before. I think that the RPi is set up around Python (which I know nothing about at the moment but which I will probably have to learn a bit of for work...) and Scratch (which is fun but mainly aimed at kids).
However, if you mainly want to learn to code the RPi is possibly not the best route if you already have a PC - it's mainly been designed for environments where you want to have a lot of cheap computers so schools could raise funding to buy one for each child in a class instead of having to maintain a pool. That said it's an excellent toy to play with and can be a good route to get motivation to find projects to complete & learn with (for example I had a mind to try to set up a drawing robot to draw an advent calendar very slowly over the course of the whole month of December, its power drain is low enough to make that practical...)
My personal favourite environment for basic learning of coding is Processing, which is simple, powerful and flexible: www.processing.org available for Mac, PC and Linux (but not RPi yet as far as I know) it's based on Java but not too closely.
To get a Raspberry Pi working you either need to buy a kit (Maplin sell some, as do other suppliers) or you'll have to look if you already have some of the kit. You need:
- the board
- power supply
- USB keyboard and mouse
- SD card: at least 2Gb, 4Gb is better
- HDMI or other lead to attach it to a TV or monitor
You might want:
The power supply can be a bit tricky - it's a modern micro-usb mobile phone charger socket but not all chargers are up to the job, you need one that can do at least 1A output: my HTC charger can do it but the other Samsung one we have won't work.
All the software is a free to download and mostly open source, you'll need to load it onto the SD card on a PC or buy a kit with software pre-loaded on the card."
HTH