As far as the coding goes, does arduino do a lot of hand-holding? Browsing over the code samples it seems like it does. What I mean is: if you try to read from a pin that has been declared as output does it bark because you have declared it as output?
If so, is this common behavior with PICs? If I were flashing a chip with a program written in C would I encounter the same thing?
The reason for asking is because as a programmer I don't want to have my hand held very tightly.....its constricting. (So what if I want to read from a pin I just wrote to....maybe that is how I want things to work in my hacked world?)
Its a moot point if at all, but it could still be very constricting ([rant]java for example has a lot of hand-holding and thus makes writing what would be a simple program becomes quite long and extensive[/rant]).