>I disagree. Everything you listed a) can't be used for products, b) doesn't let you make progress beyond "oh look, I lit up an LED!". Nonsense. This device:

>I disagree. Everything you listed a) can't be used for products, b) doesn't let you make progress beyond "oh look, I lit up an LED!". Nonsense. This device: http://nanthealth.com/vitality/ http://nanthealth.com/vitality/, which was a "big deal" to telemedicine folks (and is still a good product, please somebody reproduce it for cheap), and resulted in a MASSIVE exit for the people who founded it, was built around an atmega328p. I would be good money that it was prototyped on an arduino. This: https://www.industrialshields.com/ https://www.industrialshields.com/ is based on an arduino. Like an actual, blue, retail arduino. I've personally built one-offs for advertising installations (products for sure, but probably not exactly what you meant), that are full of arduinos. >doesn't let you make progress beyond "oh look, I lit up an LED!". This is wrong enough to make me think that you either don't actually know what a microcontroller is, or are being deliberately misleading.