I thought it was good too, except the ProMini is 'retired'. Trying to start with one might amuse a beginner unnecessarily before he works out they're past their sell by date! Not as misleading as following the old book I have that recommends learning to drive in an Austin 7 but you get the idea.
In 2018 I'm using 4 different boards.
- Arduino Uno is the beginner friendly workhorse, 5V logic, no soldering required. Quite tough and suited to fat fingered experimentation as well as real work.
- Arduino Nano is electrically similar to the Uno but about 1/3rd the size and cheaper. Soldering required which can be a good or bad thing depending on what you're doing with it. Particularly useful for embedding in finished projects, avoid at all costs if you don't own a soldering iron.
- Arduino Mega has similar compute speed to the Uno & Nano but has much more memory and lots more Input-output pins. Good for larger projects, or if you want a GUI screen, but don't pay more for one if a Nano will do the same job.
- Arduino M0-Pro. Looks like a Uno but electrically completely different. Uses a 32-bit computer at least 3x faster than a Uno, has loads of memory, advanced input-output capabilities, and hardware debugging. Sounds marvellous (and is) but it costs more, uses 3V logic (meaning not so many plug and play modules are available), and – worst of all – it's electrically far more delicate than a Uno. Not harder to program and use, but relatively easy to damage. Mainly for advanced users and projects. At this level of microcontroller, there are boards outside the Arduino family that might be cheaper and/or more powerful or more suitable. I find the board useful as a way of staying with the comfy Arduino IDE rather than learning something more grown-up & complicated that I wouldn't often use.
Of these, I tend to use the Uno the most for real projects. Nano comes a close second, then Mega. The M0 is mostly experimental – I haven't found a project that actually needs a computer that powerful yet.
Dave