Dear INTP,
ESP8266-01 is a very powerful micro controller, with embedded WIFI, you can use it as stand alone as well and it can can perform better than UNO but with limited GPIOs, it has two (0 and 2) and you can manage to add another two GPIOs by using the RX/TX pins (GPIO 3, 1)
the best way to program it is by using the Arduino IDE (an inteface that you are familiar with), and you can write your code as if you are writing for Arduino, all you need is to add the BOARD library in the IDE interface
add the following link is the IDE reference page:
http://arduino.esp8266.com/stable/package_esp8266com_index.json
and the board will show in the board manager
use "Generic ESP8266 Module"
regards
Samir Tafesh