I agree. However, if you're not willing to spend money on Code Composer, IAR, or something similar, the GCC port isn't up to snuff on the 430X variants. In fact, the whole split personality of 16/20bit mode makes me want to just give up and use an ARM (Energy Micro EFM32, for instance).
The code limitations on CCS aren't too bad. Though, yes, ARM chips are awesome. STMicro has some really nice ones, with beautiful documentation and libraries.
