Arduino Boards in Context

An easy on-ramp to embedded programming.

Arduino is an open hardware and software platform that wraps a microcontroller board with a simple programming environment. You write two functions, setup() and loop(), and a ready-made library handles the register work.

The convenience has a price: library calls such as digitalWrite are slower than direct register access. Once you know the basics you can mix both styles.

Treat the board as a learning tool, then move to bare C when you need speed or smaller code.

void setup() { pinMode(8, OUTPUT); }
void loop() {
  digitalWrite(8, HIGH); delay(200);
  digitalWrite(8, LOW);  delay(200);
}