[lennel]

easy to flash and run own distro on the ev3 as well for example https://github.com/mindboards/ev3dev or lejos if you want the jvm. the ev3 is a fair bit of fun, not as flexible as arduino (obviously) but it ain't too bad.

[masklinn]

The distro is less of an issue than the IO, more specifically the ability to have the ev3 be seen as a HID (USB or bluetooth)