Not sure what you get for $40, but I was under the impression that you had to add all sorts of shields, interface boards, interupt controllers etc ie it was a very low level approach. Much like programming in assembler 40 years ago.
Program size and RAM requirements depend on how efficient your language is - much better to ask "what can you do with it?"
The IO and Analogue channels are plenty and come 'ready to use' ie already have debounce (or raw values can be read) and pull-down resistors built in. The analogue can read voltages or thermistors directly, the Digital inputs can be used as latched inputs (ie on or off) or high speed counters (to read flow meters).
If you are not interested then things like shadow RAM for automatic recovery after a power failure, battery backed real time clock, built in multi-tasking are probably not much use to you.
It just seems to be all there for what I need to control a brewery.
The controller inside a Braumeister is probably a version of the Splat controller ...
... or at least it could be. ;-)
