[_neil]

I somewhat agree. Getting something working quickly with Johnny-five is very satisfying and to someone who is new to arduino/microcontrollers, that's a huge benefit. In many cases, you can potentially save the time you would have spent researching (for example) wireless boards, potential power issues, waiting on shipping for any extra components, etc.

Then when you're done, you realize your project is tethered to your host machine. But you have something working and can at least continue to play with it while you figure out how to get it working independently.

Also, I'm sure there are some cases where projects will benefit from being tied to the host machine anyways.

* Editing to say that I'm sure the electrical engineers among us will scoff at the dumbing-down of an already dumbed-down Arduino environment. But for the web devs who are starting with zero experience with embedded programming and electrical issues, it really helps to bridge the chasm from a screen to something we can touch.