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If you do stick with Python, check out CircuitPython. It's a fork of MicroPython, which is also good. One really cool thing about CircuitPython is that you can run CircuitPython programs on macOS and Linux with appropriate hardware. For instance, Adafruit's FT232H Breakout board will let a Linux or macOS computer use I2C and SPI over USB, and the Raspberry Pi has built-in I2C and SPI support over its GPIO connector. In either of those cases the same CircuitPython code can run on an ESP32, Linux or Mac and use I2C and SPI, which can make development much nicer.
You can run LUA on the ESP32. It's strongly associated with "NodeMCU" which was the name of an ESP8266 board that it originally ran on. At this point "NodeMCU" is mostly word salad and gets applied generically to so many ESP8266 and ESP32 boards that it's virtually meaningless, but the LUA firmware is well supported and works.
If you use C++ you might prefer PlatformIO to the Arduino IDE. You can use it from the command line, and there are integrations for many IDEs like VSCode. It has better library management and is generally just less clunky than the Arduino IDE.
In C++ you'll program with the Arduino core, which is occasionally confusing but generally has an easier learning curve than ESP-IDF. It may be a good place to start if you don't use Python. There are many many libraries and tutorials available for Arduino, and lots of code written for real Arduino CPUs will run on the ESP32 if they don't have any hardware dependencies in them. Many tutorials will also apply. Beware if you're following an Arduino tutorial that the ESP32 is a 3.3V chip and many Arduinos are 5V. People will argue about whether the ESP32 is 5V tolerant, but the safest thing to do is make sure that your circuits all work with 3.3V and don't ever send a 5V signal to the ESP32. Again, it's easy to shoot yourself in the foot with C++.
If you do stick with Python, check out CircuitPython. It's a fork of MicroPython, which is also good. One really cool thing about CircuitPython is that you can run CircuitPython programs on macOS and Linux with appropriate hardware. For instance, Adafruit's FT232H Breakout board will let a Linux or macOS computer use I2C and SPI over USB, and the Raspberry Pi has built-in I2C and SPI support over its GPIO connector. In either of those cases the same CircuitPython code can run on an ESP32, Linux or Mac and use I2C and SPI, which can make development much nicer.
You can also use it with Nim and PlatformIO!
