What are the advantages of having a development board that is breadboard compatible? Is it a factor worth considering in choosing a board?
I understand that this means access to all pins via a breadboard, but I would imagine for cases where only a few pins are required m-f jumper cables would also work?
I'm just wondering if there are any practical benefits worth considering that I may have missed.
If you want to sell a product to users that use breadboards, example schools etc, it may be wise to design things to these requirements.
It's fairly common here for beginners to ask how they can connect multiple wires to a pin on their Uno-style boards. That's much easier and less messy with a breadboard-compatible board.
Often I will have other components on a breadboard along with the development board. With a non-breadboard compatible board you have a breadboard attached to the development board with some wires and it's really difficult to move the thing around or store it. Of course you can mount the development board and breadboard to something but I'd rather not go to that effort.
connect multiple wires to a pin on their Uno-style boards. That's much easier and less messy with a breadboard-compatible board.
Except that even the "breadboard compatible" boards can be so wide that many of the holes in the breadboard get covered 
(a nodeMCU ESP8266 breakout board, for example, is 0.9 inches wide, and leaves one hole exposed on each side, when inserted into a standard breadboard.)
(and I think this is the "new, breadboard friendly" version.)
Even with only one hole exposed, it's still more convenient to jumper over to an unused row on the breadboard to make multiple connections than to do the same from a non-breadboard friendly board.
I probably wouldn't run the wires under the board like that when prototyping because you can't see where they go. It would make more sense for a finished project using a breadboard but I'm not a big fan of doing that.
Interestingly it was an ESP32 on the same board that was the inspiration of this thread.
There is a Hiletgo board that /does/ fit on a single breadboard (with a row of pins available each side) which for a quid or so more seems like the more sensible choice.
EDIT: I seem to have repeated what you said!
Thank you all for the replies.
westfw:
Except that even the "breadboard compatible" boards can be so wide that many of the holes in the breadboard get covered
(and I think this is the "new, breadboard friendly" version.)
You're quite right: the others, including the LoLIN version, cover the complete breadboard. So I normally resort to two breadboards, so the NodeMCU covers the power lines (or just use one side of the module, for most experiments that works as well).
Hi,
For the ESP32 I put connected two of these boards side by side and straddled the two power bus strips with the ESP32.
So your prototyping area is doubled width wise.
Tom... 