As others have mentioned, you don't always need the full performance of these microcontrollers, and many are pretty powerful to start with. An ESP32-S3 has two

As others have mentioned, you don't always need the full performance of these microcontrollers, and many are pretty powerful to start with. An ESP32-S3 has two cores running at 240 MHz, and boards that ship with 8 MB of RAM and 16 MB of flash for $22[1]. They also have WiFi, BLE, and tons of pins. This is more than enough to run many programs with CircuitPython, and the number of libraries available for it[2] makes it incredibly easy to get started building small projects. In addition, connectors like Qwiic/STEMMA QT[3] make it possible to connect to a large number of sensors without needing a breadboard or having to solder anything. I've built a few projects with microcontrollers like these and Adafruit sensor boards and never had to resort to low-level languages. [1] https://esp32s3.com/feathers3.html https://esp32s3.com/feathers3.html [2] https://docs.circuitpython.org/projects/bundle/en/latest/drivers.html https://docs.circuitpython.org/projects/bundle/en/latest/dri... [3] https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-adafruit-stemma-qt/what-is-stemma-qt https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-adafruit-stemma-qt/wh...