It’s not as newbie-friendly as ESP-Arduino, for sure ... the ESP32-C3 does a bit better than the ESP8266, and somewhere between the ESP32 running one core and two cores respectively.

The new boards are called Arduino Primo, Arduino Core, Arduino Alicepad ... But on the Primo you get two more controllers: an ESP8266 and an STM32F103. The former is obvious, it brings WiFi ...

With that said, the same goes for a Raspberry Pi. For example, many enthusiasts pair the ESP8266 with an Arduino, but you can also use it without one. You can program it directly and run your own ...