I think I agree with you, in theory, though in practice, I have learned a LOT by breadboarding. It's fun to prototype circuits with physical parts -- it feels like the next step up from LEGO. In practice it's probably much more practical, faster, and cheaper to write code for an MCU and then just modify the code until the project works. But (I think) it's more fun to physically plug and unplug different components.
I was one of those kids that played with LEGO since I was about 5 years old, and when I was about 12, I got a Radio Shack electronics kit (with the little sproingy terminals). I knew what a multivibrator was long before I knew what an actual vibr-- *ahem*. Anyways. One of my favourite projects was also one of the most expensive and impractical: I breadboarded a digital clock entirely out of discrete TTL chips. A 555 timer for the 1 Hz oscillator, driving a series of counters and flip flops, driving a set of 7447 decoders that in turn drove a set of 7-segment LEDs. The thing consumed so much power that it killed a set of AA batteries in about 45 minutes. But boy, did I learn a lot doing it!
I confess that I've never actually managed to start experimenting with MCU's. I keep meaning to, but I've had far too many other projects on the go... but participating in this thread has awoken my inner geek, and perhaps it's time to buy an Arduino or Basic Stamp board...
