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I bought this little monster, which I can recommend
GitHub - Makerfabs/Makerfabs-ESP32-S3-Parallel-TFT-with-Touch[^]
The stock firmware however, was garbage. It didn't take advantage of the onboard S3 chip's hardware acceleration for driving LCD displays. It was clearly thrown together as an afterthought.
The frame rates were 37fps average which with a 16bit parallel display topping out at 8MHz it could be better.
So I rolled up my sleeves and dived into ESP-IDF arcana, using a brand new and sort of unpolished as of yet system for hardware accelerating my 16-bit i8080 interface.
After diving through stale message board threads and some source code, I figured it out.
Original driver: 37FPS, flickery, no dma
Mine: 45FPS, flickery, no dma or 56FPS! not flickery, w/ DMA depending on how much RAM you want to use.
And just in time to help a colleague with some paying work he's using this device for. 
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
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Yeah, but ... Will it run Doom?[^] 
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Probably. 
It's a dual core 240MHz 32-bit system. It has 1MB of PSRAM that i've been able to access. Supposedly it has 2. It has 512KB of SRAM, after the display driver, and all the other crap is loaded it has about 320KB? usable.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
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I am NOT criticizing Python and I implore the reader please do not start nor engage in any “flame war” on Python.
I have programmed in a number of different languages over my 40 years as a developer. My current languages that I use the most are C# and T-SQL.
I see that Python is popular, or at least appears so.
What value-add(s) does Python bring that I cannot get now in C#? What disadvantages are there, if any, to using Python over C#?
Is Python a better general purpose language, or is it better at some specific niche(s) in development?
I would really like to get a clearer picture of why using Python along with, or in place of, C# would be of value.
Thanks in advance for the non-flame responses.
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Thanks. That article gives a good overview on how Python is used effectively today.
C# can, and is, used for all of those. What I am looking for are comparisons in those areas, or generally, where Python would be an advantage.
For example, design and coding time in VS 2022 (which supports both languages), performance, etc.
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MSBassSinger wrote: What disadvantages are there, if any, to using Python over C#?
You don't have to build it before deploying -- just copy the code to the destination.
Edit: Oh, I had read that as advantages, not disadvantages.
MSBassSinger wrote: Is Python a better general purpose language,
Python is not a general-purpose language. It is a scripting language, a glue language. Any heavy lifting has to be done in a general-purpose language -- then import it as a package.
MSBassSinger wrote: or in place of, C#
Definitely not.
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PIEBALDconsult wrote: You don't have to build it before deploying -- just copy the code to the destination.
Edit: Oh, I had read that as advantages, not disadvantages.
That still works as a disadvantage - with no compilation step, you've lost a basic sanity check on the code you're deploying. 
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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True, but let's assume the code has been tested.
Similarly, it's too easy to change code in production. This is a disadvantage of SQL procedures and such as well.
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I used to develop glue code (mostly monitoring and piping data between applications) for a major electric utility. The systems had to run in real time 24x7. I found scripted code to be an advantage because the on-call person always had easy access to the production code in the event of a failure anywhere in the system (often due to an external problem with a data source). This meant that emergency patches were easily applied. No special development environment was required.
Just because the production code was scripted doesn't mean it wasn't thoroughly tested before going live.
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Absolutely. As long as the change gets into source control.
But it's also too easy for a properly-authorized bad-actor to make illegitimate changes to such a system as well.
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Indeed.
That's why, in my dual role as sysadmin, I also made sure that only the members of my group had write access to the folder containing the code.
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Excellent reply. Thank you.
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The schools are teaching with Python. Academics continue to use what they are familiar with.
10-15 years ago there was a controversy about using Microsoft Windows in schools and universities. Some switched to Linux. Then they asked "Why are we teaching C in schools?".
Python is used by most academics today. I See Python packages all the time doing amazing things.
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One of the reason python is wildly popular.
CI/CD = Continuous Impediment/Continuous Despair
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Wikipedia wrote: Written in Python, C
C for the win!
modified 26-Sep-22 11:29am.
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Quick & dirty prototyping and great libraries.
Don't know which one produce the other, however.
"In testa che avete, Signor di Ceprano?"
-- Rigoletto
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We use it as a scripting language for our software. (integration into a C++ application).
It's relatively lightweight, lot of engineering folks not in programming domain use it as a simple tool to do lot of math stuff.
Our clients (and internal folks) do lot of data analysis with it.
CI/CD = Continuous Impediment/Continuous Despair
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Maximilien wrote: do lot of data analysis with it
But what language is the data analysis code written in?
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Python with NumPy.
We deal with large dataset of 3d points and 3d measurements. (see bio for company)
We do a lot in the software itself, but sometimes the clients have domain (proprietary) specific things they want to do.
CI/CD = Continuous Impediment/Continuous Despair
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I would add:
- it's free
- it works everywhere. And I mean browsers, iPhones, computing cards, workstations, PCs, macs, watches
- there's a huge number of libraries and code examples available.
- it's a very approachable language for teaching. As much as Python makes me swear some days, I'd recommend it as a teaching language over C or C++ for power and simplicity, and also over C# and Java for how ubiquitous it is and how it's not tied down to any platform or vendor. I love C#, very much, but it's a very Microsoft-centric experience (and mindset) still and that's not healthy for someone starting out who needs every option open to them.
- It's the language that anyone dealing with data analysis will use. Engineers, environmental scientists, Data analysis, AI (Obviously). The introduction of Jupyter notebooks was such a boon (and obviously this is no longer Python-only)
I will say, though, that the library system will do your head in. It's wonderful until it's not. BUT: you generally get the code, so last ditch efforts of debugging and manual patching can work in emergencies.
It also has some awkward syntax. Very awkward.
And the whole culture is a little weird, and dare I say fanatical at times. And can Guido please stop pasting Monty Python quotes in the Python docs. Dude. Seriously.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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For writing small server programs it is fine. I would not use it for anything with a GUI (and admittedly have not ever tried). For large programs it becomes harder to maintain. By large I mean > 1 man-year of code.
And for small programs, starting from scratch, it is actually fun, because with zero you make something that does something, quickly!
"If we don't change direction, we'll end up where we're going"
modified 26-Sep-22 13:49pm.
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I've backed myself into far tighter corners than Python on 2+ year projects 
It's all about architecting the solution. And some tech stacks are really well suited to this.
And some just aren't...
cheers
Chris Maunder
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I am not saying that it is useless for large projects. And "architecting" is ofc important, but let's say 2+ years PLUS volatile requirements PLUS a situation where developers come and go. Then I would not recommend Python as the first choice.
"If we don't change direction, we'll end up where we're going"
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