To be fair, I think there is a place for stuff like the Arduino, RPi, &c.; for example, I've got a couple of projects prototyped on my breadboard Pi right now, before I reimplement them on an MSP430 as I2C-connected peripherals, and even that's an intermediate step on the road to my (very eventual) ultimate goal of making them operable via USB.
Now, as fancy as all that sounds, I'm basically a software guy who can just about use a soldering iron without putting himself in the hospital. If I had to start at the end, implementing a USB interface I as yet know next to nothing about, it'd be a very long time, if ever, before I managed to achieve anything.
If I had to start in the middle, with a simple-minded little 16-bit MCU and an I2C interface, I'd have almost as hard a time, not least because I'd have to find some way to bridge the devices I'm building and the software that drives them. (Off the top, I guess I could dig up an old USB-to-parallel adapter somewhere, then bit-bang I2C on the data lines or something, but I wouldn't be delighted at having to go so far out of my way.)
Being able to start with an RPi, where I can address GPIO pins with `cat` and `echo`, and validate my idea before I start working my way up the complexity curve, is a great aid to actually being able to accomplish something. If I had EE training, that'd be one thing, of course, but I am, as mentioned, a software guy, picking up a new hobby in my spare time. Not having to learn everything all at once makes that worlds easier to achieve.
And, hey, if there are people who figure the answer to everything hardware is "buy an Arduino and some shields", is that even necessarily so bad? They're not looking to get into electrical engineering work, or at least I hope they're not; they're just excited to be able to do things they couldn't do before, because the necessary degree of complexity was beyond their capabilities. Isn't that more or less the whole point of technology?
Now, as fancy as all that sounds, I'm basically a software guy who can just about use a soldering iron without putting himself in the hospital. If I had to start at the end, implementing a USB interface I as yet know next to nothing about, it'd be a very long time, if ever, before I managed to achieve anything.
If I had to start in the middle, with a simple-minded little 16-bit MCU and an I2C interface, I'd have almost as hard a time, not least because I'd have to find some way to bridge the devices I'm building and the software that drives them. (Off the top, I guess I could dig up an old USB-to-parallel adapter somewhere, then bit-bang I2C on the data lines or something, but I wouldn't be delighted at having to go so far out of my way.)
Being able to start with an RPi, where I can address GPIO pins with `cat` and `echo`, and validate my idea before I start working my way up the complexity curve, is a great aid to actually being able to accomplish something. If I had EE training, that'd be one thing, of course, but I am, as mentioned, a software guy, picking up a new hobby in my spare time. Not having to learn everything all at once makes that worlds easier to achieve.
And, hey, if there are people who figure the answer to everything hardware is "buy an Arduino and some shields", is that even necessarily so bad? They're not looking to get into electrical engineering work, or at least I hope they're not; they're just excited to be able to do things they couldn't do before, because the necessary degree of complexity was beyond their capabilities. Isn't that more or less the whole point of technology?