every producer are kind of jealous they want us to stick to them only, but if their products are useable then why bother buying same kind elsewhere,
all free things comes with strings, the right honorable Asm51 by Metalink is free and superb but do we do programming the Z80 with Asm51?
i think there is no thing wrong with "Community". We, our unify mind force for quest of knowledge is the greatest achievement of human race, i learnt 8051 programming not in school but by alot of reading, large part from the posts in this forum and prof. Witchit web site, i learn very little from Intel. Same goes with AVRs i learn using AVRs from community even i had to admid that AVR community is hotter'n our Mcs51 and more open!
in learning new things home brew are often the best hand on approach. I never use ready made SBCs or experiment board they're just did'nt designed for me. Circuit design and firm ware programming goes hand in hand, both in learning and working
nobody hired me to program their circuit except for wanting to hack the code which my NO tend to be rather rude, you design you code holds true in micro controller field.
have a good day