I’d expected the software side of using CircuitPython chips to go more easily than coding in Arduino, but what I hadn’t really expected was for the hardware side to go more smoothly as well. It’s early yet, and most of what I’m doing is converting existing 5-volt projects, but being able to paste code into a REPL and just run it makes the initial round of testing so much easier.

I’ve got a Trinket M0 (I think it was one of the free offers) plugged into a solderless breadboard, and when I want to see whether something works I just wire it up, twiddle the pins or call the library, and get some results. It’s faster than edit-compile-run for Arduino code, and I don’t make nearly as many stupid typing mistakes in Python. (The trinket isn’t that useful for any of the projects I want to do, so using it as a test harness is win-win.)

I don’t know whether CircuitPython will be fast enough for some of the projects I want to do — a lot depends on the libraries and on those cute little decorators for emitting real code. And on chips that have DMA channels…