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 ...

It can be a scary prospect to go digging around your computer looking for specific files. Here's how to find Arduino libraries on Mac, PC, and Linux.

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.