It is basically the same thing, don't understand either why it would harder.

The only thing is to add the ESP32 module on the addons since it doesn't come enabled by default. Arduino isn't good for projects with more than 5 source code files, it is an awful IDE beyond the basic things you can pack on a single source code file.

Always had so many difficulties handling the IDE defects, basically it can crash when starting and every now and then will just refuse to upload the firmware. The other part are libraries, really difficult to setup all the needed libraries for larger code bases.

On that sense, Visual Code with PlatformIO went far beyond. Just open the project there and the libraries are taken care. The connection to boards is more robust. I'm not so sure how to feel with this sale to Qualcomm, it just feels that it is going there to die.

Quite the difference from the early days where Arduino had such energy and the tools would bring almost anyone into microntrollers with such ease.

I got introduced to microcontrollers through the original Arduino board. It took me only a year to switch to bare metal atmega/attiny (zero external components!), and to this day, those are my favourite micros despite all their shortcomings. Theyare extremely well documented, and them being 8-bit with a simple instruction set makes it very easy to learn assembly (or even opcodes). At the same time, they are compatible with 5V logic (and can be abused!) which makes them almost perfect for beginners.

Would I have been able to learn assembly with ESP32? Probably not. You couldn't even find proper manuals for ESP8266 back in the day because they either didn't exist, weren't in English or weren't released to the general public...

Well which board do you select then? ESP32 boardfiles do not come with the Arduino application per default.

Sure, to you and me this may seem trivial, you paste the URL into the prefs, but there are people who will get stumped by this and with an Arduino there is one less step you can forget, not know about or do wrong.

As someone who teaches those things at an University level I can assure you that does make a difference for at least 50% of my students if I let them try to do this unguided.

(psa: Arduino IDE 1.x works flawlessly for tons of non-Arduino boards, including Pi Pico, ESP32 devkits, etc. Most Arduino users aren't even able to consider processor implementation specifics, never signed an NDA in life, and don't even know where generated binaries go, so those boards are almost "binary compatible" with each others, all in _very_ positive sense)

It's not about whether it's hard for you.

Lots of people don't program.

More people don't know how to program than do know how to program.

In that way, just because I can't imagine it being hard, doesn't mean I understand everything there is to understand.

This creates a gap and opportunity for products to make technology more approachable for the majority, instead of the minority (programmers).

Making things accessible to more people instead of less people seems to increasingly be the way.