> their IDE does a lot of parsing/mangling to turn "sketches" into C++ programs. It can mangle perfectly legal C++ code. AFAIK the parsing is limited to extrac

> their IDE does a lot of parsing/mangling to turn "sketches" into C++ programs. It can mangle perfectly legal C++ code. AFAIK the parsing is limited to extracting function prototypes for creating the function declarations which I wouldn't call "a lot". This has been known to miss certain legal C++ function prototypes formats though. Normally the solution is to manually write the declaration yourself and format the prototype so it doesn't get parsed. It's not a hugely common occurrence though. It is true that optimisation/efficiency hasn't been a huge focus and the lack of focus on it is "development policy": http://code.google.com/p/arduino/wiki/DevelopmentPolicy http://code.google.com/p/arduino/wiki/DevelopmentPolicy While it's definitely not perfect the fact that it's based on avr-gcc makes the risk of lock-in less of an issue than some other platforms. Plus, it's fun. :)