One think you do want to know is what state are the IO pins on a reset. This screwed me up. I thought the IO pins (other than 0, 2, 15) would have been inputs and high impedance. But that isn't the case. Only GPIO4 and GPIO5 are like that. Take a look at this. https://www.mjt.me.uk/posts/esp8266-gpi ... and-reset/ Go down to the summary.
While the information is scattered in different places at least it exists. Three years ago there was a lot more discoveries, and fumbling in the dark.