I think much of this discussion suffers from the lack of terms for certain items.
I've brought this up a few times in the past.
For example what does "Arduino" mean?
While accurate, people may get a strange look on their face when you say something like:
I used Arduino to program my Arduino with a program written in Arduino.
And that is the problem. There are no separate terms to refer
to the individual components such as the IDE, the tools, the board, the bootloader, the chip, the "language".
Because of this, people tend to throw around the term "Arduino" and yet it can mean different things to
different people.
To me, this makes things very difficult to have a discussion like the one occurring in this thread.
Much of the ease of use with respect to "Arduino" has very little to do with the Atmels AVR
or AVR architecture.
It is the GUI tools and libraries, documentation, examples etc, and most of that is in no
way tied to AVR.
In a sense it is the easy to use eco system around a pre-built board,
rather than any sort of specific chip or board that
makes "Arduino" a good fit for many people, including people with no embedded programming
experience.
Because the s/w eco system is open source and in no way tied to AVR, it has been ported and is now available
for use on non AVR based processors. ARM, and pic32 based boards now both have "Arduino" IDEs and "Arduino" core
libraries available for them.
So to me the Arduino vs non Arduino argument doesn't have anything to do with AVR but rather whether
or not to use the "Arduino" eco system or not. And the "Arduino" eco system includes, boards, shields, s/w libraries,
an IDE to build the code and documentation with support forums to tie it all together.
More advanced users can selectively pick and choose which of the various components of that eco system to use
and not have to use them all.
I do think that for advanced users with lots of embedded development experience,
there can be many issues and frustrations with the IDE and the build methodology, but then
the Arduino s/w is not really aimed at them.
I just wish there were some established terms to refer to the specific components within the eco system to
make discussions like this easier, as to me right now there are just too many things all called "Arduino".
--- bill