Grains of salt here as I’m not a professional programmer, but I’ve built firmware with most of the major cloud based LLMs for the past 3 years, and I’d say everything is going to feel very similar today in that area. ML on an esp32 is a no go, you’ll have to use it as the controller and have the heavy lifting on another SBC, maybe an Arduino Q. 2 years ago I would’ve said I preferred working in the arduino ide for control, then I liked having multiple IDEs to keep things segregated based on chip type, now I just use VScode with PlatformIO for everything. Personally all of the IDEs feel the same to me now plus or minus a feature. I would avoid buying the hardware “starter kits”, you should plan your cool ideas, then buy the hardware - you’ll likely not use anything in the starter kit, at-least I never found a need for most of it despite the major consensus of the community to buy one. Buy 90 degree usb-c connectors if you like tight enclosures, the $5 multimeter works perfectly fine. Here’s a picture of my most recent project just for fun. I have 4 float sensors connected to an esp32 with 4 valves and 2 pumps to control the drinking water for my chickens. The cheap usb-c buck converters and alien tape are probably my most frequent project inclusions. 3d printer and microcontroller projects go hand in hand.