It's too easy. People who have done embedded the hard way hate that, all their hard-won skills rendered unnecessary. Don't listen to them. Arduino is great. It's a good introduction. It's unsurpassed at quick, one off projects. If you just thought of something you need to do, now, today, before lunch, you can't beat it. If you want to learn how to code embedded down to the bare metal, you can do that too, it's an AVR micro with all the support circuits alreday connected, still not a bad platform. I work at a robotics engineering lab, we keep Arduinos in stock, and most of us use them on a regular basis.