The "curse" of the Arduino software is that the libraries abstract away the registers. So you get the quick satisfaction of blinking an LED, but you're never fo

The "curse" of the Arduino software is that the libraries abstract away the registers. So you get the quick satisfaction of blinking an LED, but you're never forced to dig in to what those libraries are actually doing to make the LED blink. In my opinion, this model leaves you dependent on other people providing libraries. If you eventually want to move on to other microcontrollers, you'll have to be able to read and understand the data sheets, and understand how the registers configure and operate the peripherals. While a debugger is helpful, you can still work at the register level without one. You can simply print the register values to the serial port. In fact, if you wanted to, you could create a serial console that would allow you to set the registers over the serial port.