AVR or PIC to start programming Microcontroller? [closed]

Answer 1

If you just want to know what is MCU programming, start from Arduino is a good idea. It's cheap, with a novice-friendly IDE (based on processing programming language, which has a similar syntax with C).

But this did not answer your quesiton, beacuse altough Arduino is based on AVR, you cannot feel there is an AVR MCU behind that modern IDE. :)

Answer 2

I don't understand what the big deal with arduino is, it will ruin your chance of ever understanding what is actually happening. I program with AVR's and PIC's regularly, basically there is not much difference, I can't see what the big fuss is all about. However for a beginner stay away from arduino, it may be simple, but thats the trap, it gives you no concept of hardware architecture, and no idea what is happening behind the scenes, the stuff beginners need to learn to be an effective programmer. When I was a beginner I started out with an ATmega32 a $20 USBasp programmer, AVR Studio (Free) and AVRDude (Comes with WinAVR) and followed the intro tutorials in AVR Freaks. That is all you need, Done!!!

P.S. If you want to really learn how to program micros and have the time learn the assembler for your micro and you will be 20 times the C programmer than someone who started out using arduino.