I learned Python after I learned C, C++, Java, Scala, Rust and a few others. I fail to see my productivity going through the roof with Python. It's quite the opposite. Writing initial code is fast, but making it work well - not so much.
I appreciate C and I’ve learned a lot of things like peripheral clock multipliers and all the work that has to be done before you can even jump to main. However, I set out to make an altimeter heh.
Edit: oh and with C, writing your own device driver for every single thing is a pit of a pita too. There are open source drivers for some breakouts but they all seem to require serious hand fitting.
- you need every tiny bit of performance,
- you optimize for low executable size or low memory footprint (e.g ATTiny13)
- you have an exotic architecture that offers only a C compiler or ancient C++ compiler from 90s,
- you need to use C for other reasons like safety certification, e.g. MISRA C.
In all of these cases Python wouldn't work at all.
And in the others your can use modern C++ which can be just as productive as Python (in my case it is more productive, but I have probably spent more time with it than with Python, so I'm biased).
Twiddling GPIO pins and doing other bit gymnastics is a fair bit of simple sensor interface microcontroller projects, which is a large overlap with the target for CircuitPython.
Let's just find our own language each one and not bash others' choices, maybe?