There are a ton of pi derivatives that offer a pretty broad range of configurations. I always think of the Pi as the general consumer flagship. I was still pretty impressed with the Pi 4B... I just wish it had broader availability.
Yeah, there's a huge variety of SBCs that exist, most of which have a better specs/price ratio than RPi. If you buy a RPi, you're spending money on the hardware, you're spending it on the mountains of support/tutorials/standardization. I suspect that most people on HN can handle the reduced knowledge base that exists for BPi, OPi, ROCK, etc.