I think you mean the NDK. The SDK is mostly java.
The Tegra 3 was not as bad as the tegra 2. In fact it was bloody good. I dont other chipsets being much better if any than the Tegra 4.
of course I dont think you would see it that way since if I remember correctly you seem to have a personal vendetta again Nvidia and the Tegra
I would have no issues buying a Tegra device. However, with each generation, they seem to create some hardware-based cardinal sin.
Tegra 1 - ARM11 at a time when A8 and Scorpion are hitting second generation devices. Few devices bothered with it.
Tegra 2 - Solid chipset, but they stripped NEON support. This became a larger issue than I expected, causing it to lag behind other A9-based chipsets in performance.
Tegra 3 - Same GPU for the third straight generation. More cores but still weaker than the competition.
Tegra 4 at this time looks attractive. The GPU is based on mobile Kepler, the CPU is not stripped of any key features, and they have a decent companion core for battery savings.
I suspect that Tegra 4 should handily beat S4 pro in performance, but not battery life. We'll see.