Despite a wealth of tutorials for setting up and writing code for the ESP8266 WiFi module, there has not been much of anything on programming this cheap wireless module with the Arduino IDE ...

You can see his simple demo in the video below. Of course, you’ll use the usual language you use on the ESP8266 — [Acrobotic] uses C++ in the Arduino IDE.

There is also a “Cloud Flash” feature to program networked-enabled devices like the Arduino Ethernet or Arduino & Ethernet Shield.