Regarding this particular library, it is supported and maintained by adafruit - major arduino contributor.
To use it in your project, you just go to library manager, type in neopixel there, click download & install and that's all.
all "define"s for it are here:

#define LED_PIN 14
#define NR_OF_PIXELS 12
void setup() {
strip.begin();
strip.show(); // Initialize all pixels to 'off'
}

And to use it:

strip.setBrightness(255);
strip.setPixelColor(1,10,30,40);

no "hard coding" no "tied to 64mhz oscillator" - it just runs.
I understand that from approach of older guys like myself
this might appear to be not serious, but it allows you to get
to the end result faster - you need neopixel led, you got it
no need to care about osc clocks, tight timing and which
chip can do it, and which - can't.

Of course, arduino has it's own limitations - huge board with external osc
you can't run it off tiny SOIC-8 chip, as you can do with PBP
and that dreadful programming language, not meant to be understood by normal human beings