This is history.

New board is NodeMCU-DEVKIT-V1.0, see also https://github.com/nodemcu/nodemcu-devkit-v1.0

A development kit for NodeMCU firmware.

It will make NodeMCU more easy. With a micro USB cable, you can connect NodeMCU devkit to your laptop and flash it without any trouble, just like Arduino.

It is an open hardware, with ESP-12 core (4MBytes flash version).

Pin map with ESP-12.

It is designed by Altium Designer, and fully open–source. Now everyone can make their own NODEMCU.