Re:freeSoC and freeSoC Mini
by revelation on Saturday September 29, 2012 @01:06PM
(#4590149)
Arduino is just an AVR processor nicely wrapped. They offer their own IDE so you don't have to bother with the difficulties in getting your code on your device.
Atmel maintains an AVR port of the GNU toolchain and provides their own IDE based on Visual Studio.
Eclipse + AVRdude is also an excellent IDE for Arduino development.
Because good programmers are hard to find, and hardware companies sell more if they can convince EE design managers that their software is so easy, even the outsourced interns can be productive with it.
Everything becomes crappy, because most people don't want to wait longer and pay more for quality.
...but I have to agree, sounds like this is a neat platform, but if I can't write, compile and deploy code to it, what's the point?
Is it really that hard to provide a tool chain that lets you cross compile binaries for a platform, and a set of headers? I hate these 'integrated development environments'. It's just bloated rubbish-ware.
For all the lack of support the android NDK gets from google, at least they got that right. It's a compiler. That's all it does. You write code in whatever the heck you want, and just compile it.
I don't get why so many companies have such a hard time with understanding why this is desirable.