With reference to Arudinos, someone wrote:
They're ready-made boards that aren't in an
application specific
chassis. :
I never could see the point to those. It's much easier just build up
your device using the bare chip. If one of the big AVRs, such as one
of the XMegas, it might make some sense in helping to deal with
handling an SMT package, sort of the way the ARM stamps do.
--Chuck