Nobody said buy a raw chip and give it to a newbie. You've stuffed a straw man just to further your point. The ESP8266 is in every ESP8266 based board. Your fa

Nobody said buy a raw chip and give it to a newbie. You've stuffed a straw man just to further your point. The ESP8266 is in every ESP8266 based board. Your favorite ESP8266 based board just happens to be the D1 that comes with extra bells and whistles, such as a USB port. The point I originally made, that apparently started your tirade, was that the ESP8266 is the common chip that provides the capability people are looking for. They don't need to buy a D1 to get that capability, they can buy _ANY_ board with an ESP8266 inside! So long as it has an ESP8266 inside, they get the community support, IDE support, and WiFi support. If they want/need it, they can also get GPIO and directly program the ESP8266 inside, but that is _NOT_ required. You can plug any ESP8266-based board into another microcontroller and get WiFi connectivity through the serial pins. You've found the chip - now you just find the board. How do you not understand that? With that said, I feel this could go on forever... so... we're done.