Agree with Johnythree. I used to be an electronics technician over 12 years ago. What happened is that it became cheaper to replace a board than to pay a skil

Agree with Johnythree. I used to be an electronics technician over 12 years ago. What happened is that it became cheaper to replace a board than to pay a skilled technician to debug components on a board. You also had to pretty much learn whatever setup a company's products had on the job, as typically this was proprietary information. There are great boards/kits out today but yes, it's mostly a hobbyist thing unless you decide to go embedded, then boards such as the MSP-430 from Texas Instruments can be a good choice (especially in the Medical Devices field).