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From: Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid>
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Subject: Re: new here
Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2024 19:56:54 -0700
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dn <PythonList@DancesWithMice.info> writes:

> - it's cut-down to work on bare-metal which makes for low demands on
>   resources, but commensurate shortage of the facilities we CPython 
> developers take for-granted (ie may allow ourselves to find annoying)

Later versions of Python (the language) aren't particularly more
demanding.  MicroPython is just out of date in that regard.  The high
consumption stuff in CPython is mostly in the libraries.

>> MicroPython vs CircuitPython
> Have you (gentle reader) used both and feel able to offer a comparison
> - when to prefer one over the other?

CircuitPython is supposed to be more beginner-friendly and more
consistent across hardware.  It also supports some hardware devices that
MicroPython doesn't.  I don't know how difficult it would be to port
those drivers if there was occasion to.  MicroPython has more "export"
user options, including being able to compile in more language features
like bignum arithmetic.  I think CircuitPython integers are limited to
32 bits.

Also, CircuitPython (maybe as part of its beginner friendliness)
supports the USB mass storagei interface out of the box.  So you can buy
an Adafruit board with CircuitPython already on it, plug it into a USB
port, and have it auto-mount as a FAT32 file system to which you can
drag and drop files from your PC.  With MicroPython on the Pico, you use
some command line utility to transfer files instead, but it is no big
deal.