More about me, and the nicer side of the TI launchpad

After yesterday's post, I wanted to give my softer side of things on this really cool little tool. Yes I trashed TI for having terribly jumbled blocks of how to info, but there is definitely some gold to be had here in this kit and these stupid cheap chips. Here are my feelings about it and why I am going to be using this platform a lot in the coming random projects I have going on.

Atmega chips
Positives:

• Very powerful 
• ALL CHIPS are feature rich in some way shape or form
• Easy to program
• Lots of program space
• Premade PCB's galore to purchase or make yourself
• Premade drop on modules galore to purchase or make yourself.
• No code size limitations on most any IDE/compiler combo you get.
• Very well documented, and usually in terms that is easy for beginners to understand

Negatives:

• Pain in the butt to make a stand alone chip because of multiple components required to make it work.
• Much more expensive all around
• Even more expensive to obtain a proper programmer.
• If offboarding from arduino (or purchasing chips without the arduino bootloader pre-flashed) you MUST use an offboard oscillator to program the chip or else it wont work.

TI chips
Positives:

• Easy to offload the chip. 
• Minimal connections to use spy-by-wire (only 1 resistor pulling reset up needed).
• The dev platform @ $4.30. I mean aside from the chips themselves, this is awesome. You don't have to worry about purchasing an expensive FTDI chip. Heck, you can buy and throw a whole Launchpad in each embedded project if you want cause it's cheaper than purchasing an atmega chip and complimentary components to make it run!. Heck it's cheaper than most atmega chips by themselves!
• Fairly Speedy chips (good enough for most random diy stuff that isn't speed critical)
• CANNOT BRICK THE CHIP! No crossing your fingers hoping you dont flip the wrong fuse bits.
• CHEAP!!! Like uber cheap. Cheap is champ around these parts just fyi.
• If using gcc to compile applications, there is no code size limit

Negatives:

• Harder to program than with using the supplied libraries in the arduino IDE.
• Smaller memory size
• Using chips with memory sizes larger than 16k requires purchasing a license for Code Composer Studio IDE, and 4k when using IAR Embedded Workbench.
• Random mishmash of knowledge makes a larger learning curve for the beginner.

Now mind the idea that TI is way cheaper and a (on pcb anyway) way easier to use than the atmega series, I am itching to use these in my coming projects.