Much like web dev, the first question you have to answer when writing custom pinball software is “Which platform are you going to use?” The Mission Pinball Framework seems like it’s had the most work, but it also runs at a pretty high level of abstraction. This all means it’s probably the fastest way to get the “Hello, World!” pinball equivalent- you press the flipper button and the flipper flips- working. But it also might be the least “fun” and the least amount of new learning. pyprocgame, on the other hand, does a little less handholding.
I’ll probably give in to pragmatism and start with the MPF to just make sure I didn’t fuck up the wiring, but who knows what I’ll do after that….