It’s pretty easy to program the Raspberry Pi Pico in Python, or you can use C or C++ if you so desire. However, if you fancy the easy language of yesteryear, you might like PiccoloBASIC from [Gary ...
The Pi Picos are tiny but capable, once you get used to their differences.
If you have used the Raspberry Pi mini PC for some time and on multiple projects you have probably inadvertently remove the power supply and corrupted the operating system contained on the SD card.