Gotta wonder how often that happens: 30 pins are enough, but 26 aren't? I've had stuff that wanted 3-5 pins, or maybe 10 pins. I've had stuff that wanted 100'

Gotta wonder how often that happens: 30 pins are enough, but 26 aren't? I've had stuff that wanted 3-5 pins, or maybe 10 pins. I've had stuff that wanted 100's of pins. I can't think of anything that wanted, specifically, between 27 and 30 inclusive. Does the Pico really fail to bring out 4 of them anyway? That is kind of surprising. I know that it uses one of the ADC's for battery monitoring, leaving just 3, but maybe you can get it back by cutting a trace or something. Is it practical and useful to connect 20+ of the pins to PIO ports? The PIO's are very limited.