Espressif has a pretty good Arduino compatibility layer for the ESP32 series. So you can follow Arduino tutorials and almost everything will "just work". This what I use for quick and dirty projects.

For more "serious" things, you have the ESP-IDF, which is a pretty good C-style interface to all sorts of hardware features. Less newbie friendly than the Arduino interface, but gives you more control. And it can be used in combination with the Arduino interface.

And then, as the cherry on top, you have their official Rust HAL for the ESP chips, implementing the standard Rust embedded-hal interfaces so it should "just work" with the growing Rust embedded ecosystem.

It's honestly impressive. The only thing that has kept Arduino competitive is their brand, good reputation, and focus on the education and tinkerer space. I frankly don't understand what value Qualcomm sees in Arduino if they're just gonna throw away that reputation and education friendliness.

ESP32 is fantastic. I just ordered four more today for various projects. Barely cracked $20 CAD and free shipping from Ali.