[ladyada]

1. the BS was also revolutionary, and obviously the arduino references it, but the BS did not evolve in the last 10 years.

2. you could say the same thing about computers, crystal radios and solar panels, this is a really weak argument. we are talking about a specific product area and a group, Arduino is a great improvement, hell even having cross-platform capability (one of many details) much less a simple IDE was a pipe-dream.

3. "in the grand scheme of things", nothing except photosynthesis has been very effective. if you have a scheme in mind, you should specify it. yes Microchip gives away a lot of PICs, but they give away PICs to EEs and companies. the 150K people here are -not- all EEs, they are mostly -other- kinds of people. they are not people making products. people who make products never ever use dev boards in the final design, but at least with Arduino its bare AVR so you can reuse the code on raw chips whereas with BS you are screwed.

4. the 555 did win and its here to stay; it is a mainstay of electrical engineering and is used in products all the time. the LM101, ironically, did not.