Despite all this, I've never been able to damage an AVR. Either I am very careful in my old age, or the stock AVRs are a bit more durable than this article would lead you to believe. I'm sure I've shorted a pin to ground while set to high, for example, because it's a one-byte programming error to do so.
Agreed. I've done all kinds of accidental abuse to AVRs, shorting outputs while testing, powering an entire circuit through the USART pins, switching the PDI connector on an XMEGA (3.3V) with a +5V USB connector, that sort of thing. They seem to be quite resilient.
A classmate of mine apparently had a 5V AVR powered by +12V for quite some time in one of his projects when the voltage regulator silently failed. Apparently it operated for several days like this.
My favorite discussion about the resilience of the AVR comes from 26C3 "Advanced Microcontroller Programming", available here on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v...
"You can zap 15kV spikes into the clock inputs and it will continue to run..."
I've had similar experiences with AVRs, they are quite robust and will handle shorts, reversed polarities and the like rather well. They seem to be rather conservative on the datasheets probably as they are guaranteed over a much larger temperature range than most people use their chips at.
