mbed os alternative

Question

I am learning from scratch on IOT development. So, please be kind. I have nRF52 DK and have developed what I need using mbed os online. It was simple to get it up and going and easy to understand. My app seems to work well except it only produces debug code, not release code. Result is of course not a product and exhibits high current draw. They have an offline version that will compile to a release version but the online compiler fails when exporting the code. Very frustrating. I would like to switch platforms but do not know what I should move to. I like the way mbed abstracts the hardware but am frustrated with it. 
 I will work to build it from scratch with the offline compiler but would like to consider something else. Are there any recommendations? 
 Thanks,
Mark

RK · Accepted Answer

Lots of recommendations. 
 mbed is somewhat (in my opinion) like Arduino, a simple way to start programming embedded systems but eventually limited by the one-size-fits-all approach. You also tend to end up with least common denominator code which polls instead of uses interrupts because that model works for everything. That's somewhat inefficient. 
 If you want to pull the full power out of the device and really use all the features it's better to move to the SDK for the product and program it that way. 
 Since Nordic recently did a deal with Segger to provide the Segger Embedded Studio platform for free even for commercial development for anyone writing nRF51 or nRF52 code and they are now, in the latest SDKs even providing full SES projects you can use, I always recommend using Segger Embedded Studio, compiling, running and debugging the example projects until you understand how they work, and then building from there. 
 it's free, it's supported by Nordic and Segger and the easiest way to get into the SDK.

mbed os alternative

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