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Comment by dmitrygr | Hacker News Reader

Let me save you an hour:

Micropython, not real python, on an aliexpress LT716 smartwatch with an el-cheap-o 24MHz TC32 SoC (512KB flash + 16KB of RAM, BLE hardware).

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MicroPython is mostly compatible with Python 3, not much missing. There are even a few things MP has and Python has not, like the Viper code emitter. So the fact it's MicroPython does not make it less interesting.

I am a huge fan of Micropython. Sure, there are things that it can’t do because of the limits of highly constrained systems. But it is a great toolkit for limited systems, and greatly lowers the barrier to embedded experimentation.

I think the comment you replied to was just unfortunately worded. I also think that the title should contain "Micropython" to honor the efforts of the project to provide a lean and non-bloated implementation.

Porting the bloat of CPython to this watch would be astonishing indeed.

Honestly, your comment is very misleading & unfair. The video seems very in-depth and educational.

Sure, it is micro-python not python. But your copying the typical implicit "just clickbait waste of time" rhetoric, which is really not applicable here.

Haven't watched the dhole video yet, but it seems very genuine & interesting. What a downer your type of comment is. I wouldn't even have commented on it, but i didn't want your comment to be the only one here.

Which part of my factual and emotion-free comment do you find misleading? Which of my two sentences is wrong?

« Save an hour » means there isn’t a lot more interesting to see about that video than your two sentences.

What part of “Let me save you an hour” is factual and emotion-free?

It provided useful information (micropython, hardware details) but was disparaging rather than emotion-free (save you an hour, not real, el-cheap-o).

You seem to not realize the emotional connotation of the post, so thought I'd clarify which aspects I felt were not helpful.

Python is a language, MicroPython and CPython are both implementations of the language. MicroPython is more limited but in a few ways, it is better.

This is literally just the description under the video, no idea how it should have saved me an hour, more like 10 seconds.

For context

> MicroPython is a lean and efficient implementation of the Python 3 programming language that includes a small subset of the Python standard library and is optimised to run on microcontrollers and in constrained environments.

https://micropython.org/

what is battery life like on such inexpensive device ?

If you run the CPU in a loop at 100% load, it lasts around 40m or so, per the video.

Using it interrupted and allowing to sleep it would last much longer - with the default firmware the screen is only on when the user taps the device button.

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