Well, I kind of think of it as a distribution, just like debian, or mint, or whatever. Even though they all say their the best Linux, as if that is somehow tautological. The nRF52832 can do both Bluetooth and ANT, because they share common lower level protocols.
I haven't used ANT in a project yet, but I've worked at places that have, just on other teams. It has a more restrictive license, and you have to sign NDAs to even get the key binaries. Thats not to say that Nordic's mainline BLE is open source, but the closed source binaries are freely distributed.
My educated guess though is that Bluetooth developers have "tricked themselves" into thinking they've mastered a design, when they've actually just learned a little more about todays implementation. But as any nordic developer knows, focusing for any measureable amount of time on SDK12 just means you're gonna be super pissed when you hear about SDK13, and thats because nRF decided to totally rewrite SDK14, which will eventually fail hard enough long enough to convince them to spin up into SDK15.
But like they always say, Trust us, we only hire the best.
What you're describing focuses too much on the implementation on a specific platform. It's true that each vendor will provide their own way of doing things (perfectly normal), and things will change as well (also expected). But you have to also keep in mind that there is a lot that can be learned about the Bluetooth protocol and technology itself that is independent of the platform its implemented on. If the developer does not understand the protocol and specification, then they will end up getting sucked into the implementation of the specific platform.
I don't work for Nordic nor have any affiliation with them, but from my experience, their support is top-notch and I love the community interaction and support they offer through their DevZone site. No vendor is perfect, so it goes without saying that there will always be pros and cons.
Believe me, I stick with Nordic, and I think they stand the best chance at success. My overall point is that the system is basically at the point where it is nearly impossible to be a generalist, and very painful to be a specialist. So whats left?
The release of SDKs, and softdevices, and silicon are accelerating. If you are supporting customers on SDK12, who have heard about the shiny new features of SDK14, by the time you've signed the contract to do the migration, Nordic is imminently releasing SDK16. Forget the odd numbers in between.
I literally put my foot down with one of my fellow developers about a year ago, because we kept wasting 30 minutes everytime we'd discuss some bug, because he'd be referring to SD132v2, SDK11, NRF52832, but since I was developing for a client that day who prefered SD132v3 SDK12 NRF52832, I kept saying "dude, I promise you that bug does not exist", while he keeps screaming "bro, I've got the breakpoint hit right now!!!".
Our solution was to standardize all of our conversations, by first saying, 52-132v3-12 has this bug, yadda, yadda. And that worked great for a couple of months, until Nordic decided to release a better product, the nrf52840, but couldn't find enough courage to make a unique name for it.
So, I predict that in the very near future, Universities everywhere will make Linear Algebra and Deep Learning prerequisites for Introduction to C and Embedded. Because thats the only way you'll ever stay ahead of anything for more than an instruction cycle.
