Yeah, I just did a project at work with an RP2040 and was really impressed with the Pico SDK. It hits a sweet spot in between ST’s insanity and Arduino’s easy-but-not-powerful tradeoff.
No crazy code generation, going from 0 to blinky is quick, but also going from blinky to DMA’s and interrupts is also a breeze.
I will say that I think the hardware peripherals in STM32’s are miles ahead, and PIO’s don’t necessarily make up the difference.
Yep the STM32 has certain advantages, even if they are usually complicated to program. With the Flipper Zero I programmed a low level timer interrupt and had to setup don't know how many registers... And the documentation is lacking. Also I love the fact that the STM32 comes in 5v variants that are great to interface it directly with things like a Commodore 64 or a Spectrum.