fivebyfive VS thonny

I used my experience from the early months of the year, when I was really digging in and learning about the current state of MicroPython, to inform my talk - including some of the projects and discoveries from my DEV series. The video was published recently.

MicroPython has led me along a number of different paths - since it runs on a whole variety of different hardware. In February a tiny ESP32-C3-powered board covered in RGB LEDs caught the attention of the maker community, and I subsequently wrote a small blog series and created a project around it (fivebyfive on GitHub). It also highlighted a few learning opportunities around MicroPython on the ESP32-C3, which have been addressed in the current release. The worldwide chip shortage has meant that the RP2040 chips from the Raspberry Pi folks have been more available than some alternatives, so I've been playing with a lot of boards based on those, but until about a week ago, connectivity was more of an issue than with the Espressif chips!

Most recently, I’ve been learning about MicroPython.

In the previous post, I got everything working pretty nicely with the basics on the board - we had flashed a working MicroPython build, and had a simple piece of code that exercised the NeoPixel LEDs. Since writing that post, I also created a reference card (image above - there's a PDF, and the source GoodNotes file, on GitHub as well); and updated the code a little to add a test for the onboard status LED and programmable button.

Since the manufacturer's content is limited to a YouTube video, and the Arduino code, I've documented various experiments and findings on GitHub in a set of discovery notes.

Install Thonny and run it. Then go to Tools -> Options, to configure the ESP32C3 device in Thonny to match the settings shown in the screenshot below.

The recommended way to programm MicroPython on the Raspberry Pico is to use the Thonny IDE. Accessing the Badger with reveals the following file structure:

Personally, I like to debug and step through code to see where I went wrong so I'm going to paste the code into my Thonny IDE. I like Thonny for small code challenges like this because it doesn't require setting up a whole project just to run and step through code.

Thonny is designed speciffically for that purpose https://thonny.org .

For beginners the main advantage is the easier install and maintainance, and the less intimidating/cluttered environment.

IMHO it makes some decent tradeoffs, and it is an onramp for students evolving to VSCode or PyCharm when they feel ready.

I use the serial console with a tool like Thonny to debug KMK/CircuitPython code on my device. running something like import main; main.keyboard.go() usually prints a useful error message.

If you think you need an IDE then Thonny is a good one for beginners. It does more than a simple text editor, some of which you won't use initially, but it is more to learn on top of learning python.

Usa o thonny. É muito bom e leve.

VSCode is good but I wouldn't describe it as "barebones". I recommend Thonny. It's a Python IDE specifically for beginners.

All you really need to learn python is just an installed python interpreter, the command line and a text editor like Notepad, but that's a bit too minimal perhaps. There are things called IDEs (Integrated Development Environment) that bundle up tools such as an editor, build tools and a debugger into one package. I think that a full-blown IDE is overload for a beginner with too much to learn that isn't actually python. If you want to use an IDE try something like Thonny which is aimed at beginners. When you get some experience try other IDEs and Jupyter.

Maybe a goofy question, and definitely unrelated to the post topic, but: I’m using Thonny to learn Python: can I use NiceGUI with Thonny?