If you treat it as read-only, then yes, sd-cards work fine. But setting that up can be a hassle depending on the project, and completely out of character for wh

If you treat it as read-only, then yes, sd-cards work fine. But setting that up can be a hassle depending on the project, and completely out of character for what the raspberry is. But that is what I do, because you can't use the Pi reliably if you don't (or if you fiddle with external storage). And that is a serious limitation and something that the majority of Pi users don't. And thus endless suffering. It is not in the same ballpark as "easy to manage configuration". And many applications require that you write to storage at least some of the time. Such as HA. And in turn you must use external storage.