I don’t remember WHERE I got the bad advice that I needed the Pioarduino extension,
I don’t trust AI - but it is often a pointer at things to try - especially when the information out there is really unclear (like that versions table, doesn’t point out the “stable” option, which makes sense for most cases)
Yes - library maintainers are responsible- my point is that, in my experience, most libraries are updated anyway because they work with the newer Arduino IDE, my own library no longer works with 2.x
Agreed - there are breaking changes - for example I just yesterday got caught by the while (!Serial) change, where it used to be good practice (required by some boards), and now, under 3.0, causes code to spin and not boot.
I also have seen problems with power management compatibility - especially esp_pm_config_t