This is my first year growing veggies of any sort, and I ended up with Jalapeno, TAM Jalapeno, and Long Thick Red Cayenne (which is hotter than a "standard" cayenne) simply because that's all that I found at the local nurseries in the spring, pepper-wise. (We did have a kind of weird year as far as the variety of plants being offered and how late in the season they were offered. I was also looking for a Poblano, and couldn't find one.) I haven't managed to kill them yet, which says tons of the hardiness of the plants rather than my skill as a gardener. So all in all I agree with the statement that peppers are pretty easy to grow, in general.
As first-year plants, I didn't get a huge amount of pods in the spring. The TAM was the most prolific at that time, the cayenne the least. However, the jalapeno continued to regularly produce flowers and pods, but never a huge amount at one time. The TAM and cayenne kind of "paused" after the first crop, then in the past few weeks went wildly into bloom. I'm going to have enough pods that I'll have to freeze or dry some, assuming no major mistakes on my part over the next several weeks. (We've gotten down to the low 50's at night here now, and there's always a chance I'll fail to bring them into the house on time.) At any rate, if this second bloom is an indication of what's to come in the second year, and I don't kill them over the winter, looks like I'll have a heck of a lot more than I had this year. All this to say I wouldn't judge a variety based on its first-year production.
BTW - like your choice for your avatar!