Well it happens. Some client comes along and asks if I do projects using the Arduino.

I myself have been hearing this open source eco-system for physical computing ( whatever it means ) and have also seen some threads in this forum.

Also skimmed through the example sketches in the Arduino IDE after downloading it. Well it does look pretty cute and they are able to get so much done with so little code - as an example just to initialize a serial port and get something done with it, is a simple one line instruction like "Serial.begin(9600)". Which in a 8051 is not as easy as this - of course you create the required code once and then re-use it. Not impossible.

Just wondering if the Arduino is in fact a rapid way to start and get going ?? What I felt was that it abstracted so much of low level hardware stuff and just helps you to code your requirement ?

I maybe wrong - but would love to hear from the experts here ...

Thanks
Raghu