The Arduino IDE support was announced on the ESP8266 community forum ... Most of the WiFi functions work just like the WiFi shield library. There are a few things that aren’t written yet ...

Libraries installed via Library Manager are located within ... and component architectures, such as AVR or ESP8266. The standard Arduino libraries (common for beginner Arduino projects) as well ...

WiFi is very similar to the ESP8266 version ... but moreover have had a quick success with an Arduino external library, and my faith is restored. I suspect that these two examples are going ...

With that said, the same goes for a Raspberry Pi. For example, many enthusiasts pair the ESP8266 with an Arduino, but you can also use it without one. You can program it directly and run your own ...