But arduino does neopixel with ancient chip with ease?
the typical micro in uno etc is ATmega328P thats slightly more 'powerful' than a 18f26k22
its no pic16 clunker, the arduino chips go upwards from there in performance


no "hard coding" no "tied to 64mhz oscillator" - it just runs.
that you can see , its there , tied into a mandatory small set of fixed hardware configurations