For me, there are three categories: 1. If I need a microcontroller (e.g. low power or lots of interfacing with other hardware), it's the ESP32 if the board I g

For me, there are three categories: 1. If I need a microcontroller (e.g. low power or lots of interfacing with other hardware), it's the ESP32 if the board I get can handle it. Saving a few bucks to go with something cheaper doesn't make sense, and I can have a small stockpile so I don't have to delay a new idea to wait for Aliexpress. Haven't tried bitbanging, which is non-trivial due to the complexity of the chip, but apparently (https://esp32.com/viewtopic.php?t=713 https://esp32.com/viewtopic.php?t=713) it's doable. 2. If I want to run Linux on it, it's a Raspberry Pi. The supply chain issues this year really messed with it, but I'm a huge fan of using something that's as standard as possible, instead of figuring out the quirks of a new platform each time and trying to find which accessories are compatible with what. 3. Regular computer. Probably in a VM or a cloud at that point.