Despite a wealth of tutorials for setting up and writing code for the ESP8266 WiFi module, there has not been much of anything on programming this cheap wireless module with the Arduino IDE ...

In Arduino IDE 2, you will need to click on the Library icon on the left pane, and this directly takes you to the Library Manager page, which lets you search for libraries or browse through a list ...

Arduino offers you a broad ecosystem of cheap hardware with a beginner-friendly IDE, helped by forum posts explaining every single problem that you could and will stumble upon.