On Tue, 03 Mar 2020 17:12:10 -0500, Jim Wilkins wrote:
"James Waldby" ... wrote ...

I 'speak' Pascal, QBasic 4.5, assembly and some c, but not python. How
well does it interface with the intricacies of Windows? Can it talk to
a USB port or handle interrupts?

I don't have an MS Windows system of my own and have used Python only
a little on other people's systems. However, a goal of Python implementers
is to have complete cross-platform functionality. For example,
https://pypi.org/project/pyusb/ says "PyUSB offers easy USB devices
communication in Python. It should work without additional code in any
environment with ..." various requirements, like libusb and OpenUSB,
which are available for MS Windows, eg at https://zadig.akeo.ie.

For interrupts with Python, there's lots of detailed info related to
the Raspberry Pi. What I've seen re use on MS Windows is less technical,
eg https://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/33al25/python_interrupt_or_terminal_in_windows/
That reference doesn't refer to the probably-relevant `async` and `await`
keywords (as in async def, async for, async with) available for Python 3.5
and later. (See eg https://realpython.com/async-io-python/). Anyhow,
USB and serial IO typically work alike across platforms and I think don't
require as much knowledge of the programmer as multiprocessing does.

For the "interface with the intricacies of Windows" there's an OS module
that handles OS-specific details like file name and path rules.

For MS Windows XP, official Python organization support only goes up to
3.4. The link below has a little about dealing with async in that version.
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37465816/async-with-in-python-3-4
For MS Windows 7 - 8 - 10, the latest version, 3.8.2, is available.

--
jiw