Initial impressions

So I installed PIO after hearing Mr. Kravets on a podcasts.
What I like:
The number of boards it supports
The fact one can use MSCode or Atom and use it on multiple platforms. The MSCode version was especially user friendly.
I found it very easy to get up and running with an arduino “blink” sketch.

What I don’t like:
The fact the debugging is behind a paywall. Debugging is not a “professional feature” of a development environment but a basic feature that even in IntelliJ (and other environments offering both community and pro versions) is included in the community edition. I know this has been a bone of contention for others as well.

In summary, I am impressed by the product but the unified debugger needs to be included in the community edition. The fact that one can use one environment with many multiple dev boards will make this attractive to many people. I personally have not decided whether to adopt this for my personal projects…if the debugger were in community edition it would be a no-brainer.

I also agree that that would be very nice. But to be fair, on the other side you can argue that you can still setup debugging yourself if you are willing to spend some time setting things up (Debugging STM32 and ESP32 targets in an IDE). With PlatformIO, debugging is ‘1-click experience’ pro-feature because it does all the setup automatically for you; so that’s a feature you can pay the creators of PlatformIO for. There is a monetary business-aspect to this after all.

Makes sense what you’re saying. I didn’t know you could still debug without it in the platform. I will say, compared to other options that aren’t manufacturer specific it is very easy to set up and start using. I was able to set it up in both atom and MSCode and run a blink app in less than an hour.

Thank you so much for the kind words. This is an interim business model which helps us to maintain PlatformIO project. We also would like to see unified debugger and unit testing engines to see in community plan. We work on that. Stay tuned with us.

P.S: I’ve just reset your trial account. So, it will be never expired. Please re-login. You can use debugger and other features for free.