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"Microcontroller" refers to everything on the chip (usually, we would talk about it having a "core" roughly akin to memory + ALU + such, and "peripherals" which are on-chip dedicated hardware that migh be eg. I2C or USB communications, timers, ADCs, etc). What you're linking to we would call a "development board" (dev board), "demo board", "eval(uation) kit".

I don't consider the title misleading, as the article is aimed at the people who are designing their own (hobbyist probably, but not exclusively) boards, and will be integrating the chip, not a dev board, into their project.

That's not what microcontroller means.

Yeah, I probably wouldn't be concerned about the cost of the actual chip but rather the cost of w/e dev board I would need for my hobbyist project. Maybe the complexity of wiring everything up if I were to put the microcontroller on a custom designed PCB.