TBH, you can do pretty much the same without an arduino at all. A FTDI cable and the right command line tool will allow you to program an AVR easily enough! FT

TBH, you can do pretty much the same without an arduino at all. A FTDI cable and the right command line tool will allow you to program an AVR easily enough! FTDI has a 'bitbang' mode that can work as a SPI (or well in this case, a ISP!) peripheral and lowish speed, and that's pretty much all you need.