While yes, its forked from MicroPython, saying it is just rebranded is almost like saying Ubuntu is just rebranded Debian.
The biggest difference is how they handle core modules... rather than having a per-port/board they have a common set of core modules. There are also a lot more of those modules and it seems to have a fairly robust set of hardware/boards that are supported.
I'll be the first to admit that I don't do a whole lot in either since the boards I work on are a bit resource constrained.
The other thing to note is that Adafruit is putting a ton of resources into CircuitPython, I see updates/improvements all the time from them in their git repo. The velocity in CircuitPython vs MicroPython appears to be significantly higher (and that by no means is a dig at MicroPython, I love their project and they have so much cool stuff going on).
I have played a bit with MicroPython and I had heard of CircuitPython but wasn't across the differences and reasoning behind the fork. Limor actually did the Sunday morning Keynote at the the Linux.Conf.Au conference held over last weekend where she went into into a lot of things that were around repeatability and accessibility especially for novice programmers. The video will have been recorded but yet to be published and I would expect it to be linked from the abstract page [1] soon and/or on the LCA YouTube [2] channel.
As promised, here is the keynote speech at linux.conf.au last weekend by Limor Fried from Adafuit on the reason and drivers behind CircuitPython https://youtu.be/jZnDCs80b_A
The biggest difference is how they handle core modules... rather than having a per-port/board they have a common set of core modules. There are also a lot more of those modules and it seems to have a fairly robust set of hardware/boards that are supported.
I'll be the first to admit that I don't do a whole lot in either since the boards I work on are a bit resource constrained.
The other thing to note is that Adafruit is putting a ton of resources into CircuitPython, I see updates/improvements all the time from them in their git repo. The velocity in CircuitPython vs MicroPython appears to be significantly higher (and that by no means is a dig at MicroPython, I love their project and they have so much cool stuff going on).