I’m in a confusing spot and would like honest takes from people who’ve been through it.

Arduino got me into electronics. Breadboard, sensors, blink-to-servo pipeline — it worked. The tutorials made sense. For a while I felt like I was learning real skills.

Lately I’m less sure. I open more “serious” maker / embedded threads and keep seeing ESP32 (and other boards) everywhere. Part of me wonders: am I stuck on a beginner track? If I keep building only on Arduino, am I practicing habits that won’t carry into projects people actually ship? Another part of me thinks I’m overthinking it — that Arduino is still a valid way to learn fundamentals, and jumping chips too early just means more debugging and less building.

I’m not trying to dunk on Arduino. It’s what got me here.…