One of my favourite development board is arduino.I am not specifying any model because it varies upon the projects which we are doing as well as users who handles it.For beginners Arduino boards are easy to understand as well as perfect to develop skill in their making.
Some factors which make arduino a beginner-friendly board from others are
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Provides easiest debugging environment.
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These boards will be helpfull for a beginner as well as a professional inorder develop their skill.(If you know how to design an arduino board eventhough its not a microcontroller you can develop a new board by yourself)
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You can find enumerous libraries and IC's build for the same.
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Runs on low voltage,less external circuits required for many projects,led indication(which makes a beginners' tasks and learning easy)
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Community support and its fame(Almost every hardware makers will have a previous experience with this board so any doubts or questions can be easily clarified for the beginners)
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Prototyping language is not that much tough(C/C++) and also this IDE can be done in every platforms like Mac,Linux,Windows.
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Size-according to your project or tasks you can use different models.
I dont think there will be an ideal development board like everyone said there will be pros and cons for every boards.And also there is a main factor which made me to say like this and that is I have only used some of them like arduino,esp,pi