Despite a wealth of tutorials for setting up and writing code for the ESP8266 WiFi module, there has not been much of anything on programming this cheap wireless module with the Arduino IDE.

he can connect the Arduino directly into his computer’s speaker port for programming. Once the microcontroller is connected to his computer, he runs the IDE-generated hex file through a Java app ...

Microcontroller ... Arduino systems have a relatively lower learning curve than conventional analog embedded systems, with the highly intuitive Arduino IDE simplifying many programming tasks.

Meanwhile, the Arduino family consists mostly of microcontrollers ... to program the Arduino board by connecting it to another PC and manually creating C/C++ codes using the Arduino IDE.