Is an ESP8266 running Arduino code question allowed?

Question

More and more questions seem to be asking about ESP8266 programed via the Arduino IDE and running "Arduino" code, and quite a few about ESP8266 and NodeMCU.
1. Is it OK to ask about ESP8266 programed as an Arduino?
2. Should questions asking about ESP8266 programmed using LUA, etc. be closed as off topic?
3. What about questions about ESP8266 hardware are they off topic too?

Answer 1

For me, here are suitable cases:

1. Problem setting Arduino IDE to "talk to" ESP8266, possibly including wiring, as this is directly related to Arduino IDE
2. Problem connecting ESP8266 to an Arduino, be it a wiring or program issue, as long as the program in on Arduino side

However, the following cases are off-topic:

1. Issue with NodeMCU, lua language
2. Issue with ESP8266 API
3. Issue with connecting an ESP8266 to anything else than Arduino

Answer 2

As Arduino-branded boards now include Intel- and ARM family-based boards, the lines can get kind of blurred. If an Arduino-branded, ESP8266-powered MCU board were to appear, should we include it as on-topic but exclude AI-Thinker ESP-01 or other ESP-xx boards?

An alternative to including ESP questions is to Beta an ESP site. But that path leads to fragmenting the {electronics, programming, applications, etc.} questions into too many sites. EE/SE's often unwelcoming stance on Arduino questions began the process. (Or was it already prevalent w/in SE? My experience here doesn't go back that far).

I'd propose we don't feed the process, but adjust Arduino SE's boundaries, and even its name if necessary, to fit the community, not the other way around. Embedded Systems Engineering - what we really do here, despite that most of us are hobbyists - is multi-disciplinary activity that 1) includes electronics, programming, board layout and building, and software tools (IDEs, libraries); and 2) touches hydraulics, robotics, optics, sonar, data communication, networks, chemistry & biology (brewing, f/ex). I've seen us field questions in all of these topics in my time here.

This cross-disciplinary hobby (or career! ) makes a hugely rich learning environment for all of us and we'd give up a lot of that by splitting off some processor or another discipline. Our contributors collectively know a heck of a lot about a lot of things and share it generously. We should encourage that.

We've mostly managed to avoid having hard boundaries and getting unpleasant with new folks that wander close to one, as a few SE sites do. I'd like to encourage that and keep us more inclusive.

Answer 3

I think it depends on how you see "Arduino". Arduino started as Arduino.cc: a (open hardware) board and (open source) software provider.

However Arduino has moved on, and now the community "Arduino" is far more important then the companies (arduino.cc and arduino.org).

The "core" of this community is the API the company Arduino designed. The community added lots of libraries on top of and extending this API. The community ported the API to other processors. Anyone porting this API/libraries to a other board adds the boards to the community.
As the Arduino API and many of its libraries are ported to ESP8266 based boards; implementations on these boards using the Arduino API and libraries belong to the Arduino community (but are not strictly speaking Arduino).

As stackexchange is a community driven site I think it would be weird to pick the company card and not the community card. Therefore IMHO these boards should be supported here.

Another way to look at it: if you ask this question for ESP8266 based boards; why don't you ask this question for Teensy boards or adafruit boards and other vendors? What sets ESP8266 apart that you ask it for ESP8266 and not for others? Do you realize that Paul Stoffregen (maker of Teensy) did lots (if not most) of the multi platform implementations in Arduino?

Suppose we leave out all non real Arduino boards, ..... what with arduino.org versus arduino.cc .... Will we only support Arduino.org boards? Or Arduino.cc?
Do you really want to go into this discussion? I don't.

For me Arduino is the Arduino community. I embraced ESP8266 just like I embraced Teensy and Adafruit. They are part of the community. Without them the company Arduino is nothing.