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Comment by heywire | Hacker News Reader

I actually only recently became aware of Thonny when working with MicroPython on a Raspberry Pi Pico. It made it really easy to work on a program and execute it on the device. I’ve worked with Arduino and such over the years, but the edit/execute cycle with MicroPython was much quicker. I didn’t do much with it beyond blinking some LEDs, but I came away pretty impressed.

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Same here, but had to switch to VS Code very quickly. Thonny is very nice, and nothing does the Py Pico integration better, but too basic I'm afraid.

I’ve been doing the same, except I went one step further. I’m currently extending Micropython to add a DMA class to the RP2 port. I can build and debug Micropython via VSCode and use Thonny to write some Python to test. I could with the setup being a bit quicker (maybe an 8GB pi 4 would help)

debug Micropython via VSCode

On the C source level you mean (and also on-device or rather the unix port or so?)? Or is there already functional Python-level debugging these days (I know there's basic trace module support)?

Yes, I can set breakpoints in the C code and run the firmware on a Pico. It’s all running on a Pi4, so it was just a matter of adding the debug pins on the Pico and configuring vscode (instructions followed in docs).

In case you're not aware, there's some promising work on DMA for the rp2 in PR 7641:

https://github.com/micropython/micropython/pull/7641

I've had the best experience with Thonny working with MicroPython. I'm amazed at how seamless updating files and even flashing MicroPython on devices like the ESP8266 and Pico is. I do miss the Python coding experience of PyCharm when using it though.

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