[crote]

On the other hand, their competitors haven't been sleeping either.

Companies like Adafruit and Sparkfun sell dozens of tailor-made dev board variants, and their I2C module system allows you to mix & match a whole bunch of peripherals.

The code? A handful of lines of Python, which you can drag&drop onto it like it's a flash drive. Or use a browser-based IDE if you want one-click library install and serial logging.

Arduino's IDE was groundbreaking in 2010, but these days there are easier (and cheaper!) alternatives for beginning hobbyists, and better alternatives for power users.

[cptskippy]

This is spot on. Arduino occupies a space that everyone else vacated a long time ago.

[structural]

Good on the Arduino folks for getting acquired, then. They still have a niche and a brand with name recognition, even if that niche might be stable at best, collapsing at worst.