The PIO is super cool. I haven't had a good use case for it yet but will enjoy messing with it once I do.

Party I am petitioning for passersby who might be wincing at the new prices for Pi 5s etc. for starter electronics/programming projects when they could save a ton of money with a Pico. I have to assume that a huge chunk of Pi 5 purchases from consumers end up with the computer either stuck in a drawer, having been used for a couple days, or running a workload they are completely overpowered for. Every time I see the new prices I wonder how much lower they would be if the consumers were better informed and demand was more appropriately redirected.

To give a specific example of a misused Pi, I've seen an RFID access system made by a hobbyist (low stakes, no need for professional/commercial solutions) running on a Pi 3. When the system glitches (another matter entirely - messy code) and needs to be rebooted you need to wait a minute or two for Linux to start up. I'm planning to replace this system with a Pico 2W. All it needs to do is handle a couple of buttons, a small LCD screen, and an RFID reader. We can handle all of that and a WiFi-accessible web admin interface using a microcontroller. Not only is it wasteful (for whatever that's worth) to have a quad core CPU, 1GB of RAM, and a whole Linux OS to perform such a trivial task. It's also leading to issues with complexity and performance.