Well for me, at the time there was no reasonably priced ATTiny85 dev boards that I could just plug in a chip, program it and then put it on a breadboard. Today there are options but mostly why I still use my own programing board is that I am not limited to just the 8 pins ATTiny series. Here is a picture of my programer. If you notice, I am also using a ZIF socket which makes putting in and taking out the ATTiny85 much easier.
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