For a seasoned hobbyist, not really if you get the correct tools and software.

How exactly do you program a microcontroller? With a pc.

So having a pi with NOOBS on the boot drive where u can just plug in peripherals and be off to the races is easier.

I don't thinks so at all. I'm basically a dummy and that's what I use make a living.

Used to be the thing that makes life difficult for a hobbyist is either you need to learn a lot of arcana to string free tools together and learn to debug blind. Or you needed to spend a bunch of money on tools.

With a bundled in circuit emulator and IDE it's easy to get started. That used to cost a couple of thousand. Now it's a few hundred to $1500 or so.

Depends heavily on the project: For more electronics and hardware-oriented projects an Arduino or microcontroller might even be easier to use.

But imagine making e.g. an internet-controlled LED light strip. With an Arduino setting up the WiFi, accepting TSL connections, etc. would probably be a major pain and require additional hardware. With a Raspberry Zero W, this can be done via ssh in a few minutes, and it still has PWM ports to connect the hardware to.

Not really, not if the tooling is half decent. And for stuff like the Arduino it's fairly good, even for a beginner with a wee bit of programming knowledge.

I used to be pretty fluent in 6502 back in the early 80's, it's a long forgotten skill in my brain. I bought an Arduino kit back in 2010 and had a bunch of flashing LEDs working in about half an hour. And I'm not that clever. It's all about the tools.