arduino, love it or hate it?

[blackbeard]

what's your take on it? personally i love it and think it's a really great and easy micro to build a project off of. i havn't really scratched the surface of what it can do though but at $6 a piece it's a really great way to add a brain to my project. even a 555 needs at least $1 worth of components and my local electronics swindler charges $3 for the chip

[WhomBom]

I love it!! but momentarily i'm wasting more like 30$ on an arduino.. i've tried the launchpad because it's a lot cheaper but i found it also has a steeper learning curve (yeah... noob here  )

where do you get arduinos at 6$??

[madsci1016]

First, I want to clarify something. There's the Arduino library, and the Arduino hardware.

I love the Arduino Library for quick programming. Easy to use, easy to remember function names, and a very easy to navigate online reference system. I love/hate the Arduino IDE (Processing IDE). It's simple to use, but is missing some features like line numbers running down a side, and you can't collapse functions like is Visual Studio.

The Arduino hardware is overpriced. I have only ever bought a few Arduino Pro mini's. Now I just always design and fab a board for whatever I want to do. That way I get exactly what I need for about the same price as buying an Arduino, not even considering what I'd pay in shields. Then I just flash the blank AVRs with the Arduino bootloader.