[ramblerman]

History and Moore's law would tell us that at some point we won't have to fiddle bits for every single embedded project.

Is that time now, maybe not. But it seems like a great tool to prototype with. I'm really confused how enabling a whole legion of programmers to get creative with hardware invokes such bitterness in you.

I'm sure what you do is very special, and this is no direct threat to that.

[kamaal]

And history of embedded systems tells us that at all times you will have to fiddle bits for nearly all embedded projects.

MCU's are getting faster at the expense of getting power hungry. Plus there are a several other things that need low level optimization that C provides. There is a reason why C has such a invincible death grip in the embedded domain. It will take you trillions of dollars worth of investment and nearly two decades of effort if you have to dethrone C from there. Nearly every stake holder, is so deeply entrenched in C its not even pragmatic to think you are going to replace at anytime sooner.

>>I'm really confused how enabling a whole legion of programmers to get creative with hardware invokes such bitterness in you.

All programming, is creativity with hardware. Because the form factor got smaller doesn't mean a thing here.

This is the gripe I have with many Rasberry Pi Users, who call printing hello, world 10 times with a python script as 'hardware hacking'. The situation is so super hilarious.

Say you wrote the same Python script on a laptop with the cover removed, now that you see the electronics inside the laptop and you are also running the python script, did you just got magically creative with hardware? Why wasn't it magic when the electronics wasn't visible.

And yes, for any real creative thing of production and mass deployment value. All the best trying to do it in anything apart from C.

[jacal]

Moore's is about transistor density on an IC.

When the target embedded circuit needs (and energy needs) are far, far tidier, it is laughable to think that a bunch of wasted IC overhead will undercut any advantage to developing the prototype on a board like this. Simple things can and will be simple.

ATMEGA's are looking for problems. General devices don't compete with specialized. See CPU vs. ASIC's in bitcoin. Hi bitcoin miners with GPU's... show me your hands. Here's your ass back.

And I think that's the comment's point. These prototyping platforms are nice for some narrow band of testing ideas, but don't translate for the "hacking the internet all the things!!!" when compared to what the trained circuit-designers do in their sleep and get mass-produced by morning coffee.

I can make drop-shadows in photoshop and you use CSS3? I'll just use the data layer plugin to make the bestest sites evar!