fngi VS circuitpython

I've been writing my own language, fngi, which is inspired by Forth to create an extremely minimal language. However, I'm considering doing a rewrite and in so doing am taking a second look at some other languages.

The barrier to entry has never been lower. Last night I prototyped some code in Python on my Mac to talk to a Bluetooth peripheral, and then had ChatGPT translate it to Arduino C++ code for a $5 ESP32 which mostly worked on the first go.

You can even run Python on microcontrollers these days. See Adafruit's https://circuitpython.org for which they publish modules for many (almost all?) of the sensors they sell. The modern microcontroller frameworks hide much of the complexity of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, filesystems, etc. so you can do complicated things with minimal effort. You can really cobble something together in an afternoon.

The Pico runs CircuitPython and uses Adafruit's HID library to emulate a keyboard. It's also possible to emulate a mouse and a gamepad (there are some experiments for gamepad emulation in experiments).

Asked your question in the adafruit discord and they said there's no HT1632c library for circuit python yet. There is a library for micropython. You can request to have it ported from the Micropython library I linked to by opening a feature request in the Circuit Python Github. That would be your best option for now or attempt to port the library yourself.

I'm aware of two versions of Python for microcontrollers. Micro Python and Circuit Python

There was a whole Github discussion on whether or not CircuitPy should use interrupts.

Let me google that for you.

As the cost of more powerful micro-controllers continues to drop, the time and cost savings that comes with working in higher-level languages is starting to outweigh the cost of using cheaper/less-powerful micro-controllers. There are already options such as micropython and circuitpython for using Python on micro-controllers, but they're not in wide commercial use as of yet (as far as I'm aware).

Arduino helps circuit developers to build electronic projects and is, perhaps, the most used open-source hardware and software platform. It is popular across millions of hobbyists across the world. Historically, Arduino boards are programmed with C++ programming language using the Arduino IDE. The availability of powerful ARM-based Arduino-compatible boards made it possible to use python, JavaScript, or even a browser to program your circuit. While they are easier to study for a new joiner without an existing programming background, C++ stays a default language choice, especially when dealing with cheap and low-memory AVR-controller boards and having a need to run more or less complex projects.

If your application doesn't need every bit of performance or memory, consider CircuitPython or MicroPython. The CircuitPython community is a bit more active but CircuitPython needs native USB support on the MCU, so out of the ESP family, only the ESP-S2 and ESP-S3 currently support it. MicroPython can run on any ESP (okay not certain about the C3).