I have to agree with Erik, wow :) in that his notion of state-of-the-art, in his case SiLabs, hardware provides a useful feature that is difficult to reproduce otherwise. I don't know how extensive the debugging support for the SiLabs chips, via their JTAG interface is, i.e. I don't know how good the trace feature is,
there is no trace, However when working with other ICEs I have never paid the extra k's to get trace, I see a trace being useful about twice a year and spending a few hours twice a year for want of trace does not justify several k's.
and how is displayed to the end-user.
very nicely (C) source and disassembly
However, if it gives the ability to capture, in real time, the events that occur around the MCU, and display them to the user, it's pretty useful.
it is
PC-based HLL compilers, which, IMHO confuse the hell out of new learners with respect to what they're doing, completely distorting the process and totally disturbing their focus on the 805x architecture.
well said