The various development boards such as the NodeMCU or Wemos D1 make working with the ESP8266 an absolute breeze ... Just as with the Arduino, once you have the wiring sorted out and the code ...

Rumors are that there will be eight-pin ESP-O1 modules ... friendly as ESP-Arduino, for sure, but it’s a ton more powerful, and we’re totally happy to leave the ESP8266 SDK behind us.