Learning using AVR/8051/any 8 bit micro >buy 5$ board + micro

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Learning using AVR/8051/any 8 bit micro
>buy 5$ board + micro from amazon, or just a micro directly if i dont feel like spending too much money
>download datasheet, maybe google around to learn the basics
>download a well supported toolchain with minimal performance overhead
>even download an assembler to work in assembly if i am feeling like it
>learn to use the thing in one week max

Suddenly i feel like using one of those powerful ARM based ones, so i go ahead and buy an stm32

>buy 5$ board, other alternatives are more expensive but my personal opinion says its the same micro on the board so can't be that different
>suddenly get my mouth raped with all the shit about JTAG, STLink shit
>some obscure page tells me i can program the micro using UART, fuck yes
>datasheet is over 1000 pages with lots of cryptic useless info
>have to decide between 3 different kinds of abstraction layers to actually use the micro
>have to download a 400MB toolchain, cant find any info about ONLY its registers anywhere (so that i can make my own header files to use and actually understand the thing)

Who thought this was a good idea? Why can't ARM be more like 8 bit micros?