Thanks for the link. Bookmarking.
I agree for first time users it may be better to get a 10$ ESP32 board or something with some code space and ram to make something interesting. My argument is that many many people already have a Raspberry Pi often an older one or even a Pi Zero just sitting around and the owner needs something embedded to solve a problem and does not want to deal with Linux maintenance for a simple GPIO task.
Just my 2c 