Yeah the EEPROM is for storing external programs, you can use it without and use the internal programs. There's chorus, flanger, trem, pitch shift, delay and two reverbs. These are nice, the chorus and flanger probably won't excite to many people on here compared to dedicated analogue units, but they're perfectly useable. The EHX Holy Stain pedal uses some of the internal effects, so you can get an idea what they sound like.
I haven't got one, but I think the dev board only allows you to program its on board EEPROM. The software for it can be used without a dev board, which is what I do, and can create hex files that you can then write to an EEPROM using any programmer. I use a PICKit 2 programmer, but I'm looking at cheaper options. I'm thinking of trying a serial port one, as most PCs and laptops still have those, and they can be built using a few passive components, which most people here would probably have in their junk box, there's free open source software available that uses them.
I started messing with the FV-1 about 18 months ago having never done any programming other than a bit of basic as a kid. The Spin website has lots of example code and code for a number of complete effects. You can get quite a long way just taking building blocks from those and combining them without fully understanding everything that's going on, same as you can with circuits. There's only a small number of instructions so a lot of it is figuring out how to do what you want using them.
I don't know of anyone selling preprogrammed EEPPROMs. If there's any demand I'm thinking of selling FV-1 chips on a through hole adaptor, so people can play with them without having to get into SMD, and possibly offering preprogrammed EEPROMs. Even if I don't do that I'd be happy to burn a few for people who wanted them.