[IshKebab]

Arduino is popular because you can download a single program, buy a fairly cheap board, plug it into USB and program it easily. Also it was the very first system to make microcontroller programming vaguely affordable, so it has kept a lot of mindshare due to that.

There's literally no other systems that are as simple as Arduino for newbies to use. The only one I know that is vaguely close is mBed, but that uses an online compiler (gross), or a relatively complex and not that great CLI interface. Arduino's IDE may be shit but at least it is simple and easy to install.

Almost everything else involves complex JTAG/SWD programmers and weird OpenOCD command lines and frankly that is just shit. Even as an experienced embedded developer the state of the tools is embarrassing.

[ZenoArrow]

>"Also it was the very first system to make microcontroller programming vaguely affordable"

I'd suggest that the BASIC Stamp got there before the Wiring/Arduino:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASIC_Stamp