Arduino enviroment or C or ......

[bbbad]

I'm new to physical computing. I have an Arduino nano and have had some fun with it, but I'm not clear on how useful it is as a prototyping board, since the chip is SMT directly to the board.
I'm assuming I can get an Arduino with a socket, program the chip, then move it to a pcb by mapping the pins correctly. This would allow me to work in the Arduino environment, but programming isn't my problem. I could also work in C or even Assembly, though i's ben a while since I worked in either language.
My question is am I beter with the Arduino using it as discribed above, or should I just move right into C with AVRDude? I seee people here doing both, but what's the better work flow for prototyping and then moving a project to pcb?

[trialex]

Of course it's all personal preference.

I do everything in Arduino IDE, upload it to an Arduino board, then move the chip to the target hardware when it's finished.

If you are very proficient at c/c++/assembly, you can obviously do more optimisation of the code. You can still use the arduino hardware though to upload your code.

[bbbad]

That's simple enough if you use the current arduino chips, but what if you only need a attiny2113? Can that programmed with an arduino? I have several litle projects planned that don't require much in the way of resources, I could use a 168 anyway, it's only a couple of bucks, but it feels wrong.
If I need to work outside the IDE for the attiny2113, then the question is whether I want to do both the IDE and some workflow using avrdude. The arduino definitely simply simplifies things. For my first project, I built a 5x24 led display using only the pins on the arduino. I'm using a trick from the guys at nerd kits. They're code is also C, but its so tricky it's hard to read, so I'm starting from scratch with the arduino IDE. I'll see how it goes.
I'm a high school physics teacher and I'd like to put together courses in robotics and electronics. Probably, I'll use the Arduino with beginners, especially for experimenting and testing, and then switch to whatever workflow suits the chips I'm targeting for more advanced students.
What about Wiring? I know nothing about it, but if it supports many different chips then maybe that's the answer

[trialex]

Well at the moment the Arduino IDE "officially" only supports the Mega8, Mega168, Mega328 and Mega1280.

The wiring platform only supports the Mega128.

There are some people who have modified the arduino IDE to program other chips - I've seen the mega644, tiny84 and tiny2313. These are not official realeases though. You can find info on the smaller chips by searching the arduino forums (use google rather than the search engine built into the forum) for "luminet"

personally I just use a mega168 for everything, not worrying about the extra dollar or two compared to the 2313.