I'm just going to mention Pure Data here, because I'm always surprised when people don't know about it. https://puredata.info/

I use it in my art and music practice to interface with hardware like a GameTrak controller, and to control drone motors for bowing/drumming physical things for computer controlled electroacoustic music. I also use it at a university lab for the development of assistive musical instruments for disabled musicians. It is both an extremely useful tool, and an incredibly fun musical playground for the mind.

The Plugdata variant of Puredata is particularly handy. https://plugdata.org/

Plugdata can run as a plugin in your DAW, compile to a standalone plugin, and compile and load sketches onto a Daisy Seed (https://electro-smith.com/products/daisy-seed).