I dunno, I managed to get it running within a day or two, and had zero experience in this kind of electronics before.

Used a raspberry pi to control it, with a button to switch it into programming mode. No soldering, just wires and breadboard.

But now I use a d1 mini since its more comfortable/less breakage from accidentally removing wires when cleaning.

I'm a software guy and had never picked up a soldering iron in my entire life. I managed to get my first esp8266 (the adafruit huzzah) soldiered to a little temp/humidity sensor on a small permanent breadboard (not sure the exact name) and had it pushing data into my home graphite server. Took me all of 2 days start to finish.