An Interview with Scott Shawcroft

The Amp Hour · 12 Mar 2018 · 1h 45m · Episode 383

What this episode covers

Chris Gammell, a software engineer at Adafruit, explains the architecture and philosophy behind CircuitPython, the fork of MicroPython designed for beginners. He details the technical differences between interpreted and compiled languages, the use of a virtual machine to execute byte code, and the uniform API that allows drivers to work across different microcontroller families like the SAMD21 and SAMD51. Gammell also walks through the low-level debugging process using J-Link and GDB, explaining how hardware breakpoints and the Micro Trace Buffer help troubleshoot firmware issues.

Mentioned

Companies
Adafruit
Products
CircuitPython, MicroPython, Arduino, Trinket M0
Chips
SAMD21, SAMD51, nRF52, ESP8266, ESP32, STM32
Tools
J-Link, GDB, Atmel Studio, Microsoft MakeCode

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