Well said WBahn, that is exactly what I was trying to say, but you say it so much betterI think both camps have valid points and which view should be allowed to dominate depend very much on the context. For people that are doing just a little bit with a micro and have no intent to go any deeper, the Arduino is very possibly a perfectly justifiable option as an efficient means to a specific end. But for people that ARE supposed to be learning the fundamentals, it can do more harm than good. We see the same thing all over the place -- lab test equipment that has such capable "Auto Set" features that students can make it through a couple semesters of lab courses and never learn the first thing about how to make oscilloscope measurements. Or programming languages that do such a good job of shielding the programmer from what has to go on under the hood that they never develop the faintest hint for how to actually write solid code. These things are wonderful in a working environment, but they can be crippling when used too much in an educational environment.
