These days, with ESP32, Pi Pico W etc... things have changed a lot.

But before they got popular, Why deal with MCU + wiring some weird peripheral for wifi / ethernet when you get a Pi Zero W / Clone with built in wifi for the same price?

  void setup() {
    pinMode(LED_BUILTIN, OUTPUT);
  }
  
  void loop() {
    digitalWrite(LED_BUILTIN, HIGH);  
    delay(1000);                     
    digitalWrite(LED_BUILTIN, LOW);   
    delay(1000);                      
  }

It is c++ though. Just limited in similar ways to the US air force's requirements for using the language.

(Of course, there are those to whom an Arduino is an overpriced piece of junk and they don't understand how I can't solder a three cent chip myself.)

But let's be realistic - all of these things are like my Steam library - purchases made but never used (I have a drawer full of Pis and other SBCs, and Arduino dev kits, etc. Someday I'll have time time time!).

  int main() {
    setup();
    for(;;) loop();
  }

I'd assume the average user on HN should be able to figure it out pretty easily.

In fact it's a lot more straight forward to not have to deal with Network Manager config files or systemd unit files or read only rootfs headaches of Linux world.

You can usually find libraries for your language of choice to speak GPIO and expose the pin's state as a variable in your code.

Now what I would have loved to have done is come up with some crazy analog circuit to implement an arbitrary transfer function from potentiometer input to LED voltage, but I didn't know how to do this at the time and the dev cycle would be a lot more painful than with software.