I couldn't figure out how to get my cheapo, old, ebay 20x4 LCD to work with micropython and talk to my ESP32 so I cobbled something together to make it go.
You can find it here:
https://github.com/dork3nergy/lcd_2004
It's dead simple but it works.

There are means with ampy (Adafruit) that allow you to run code, from your computer, on the ESP32 - look at the "run" option in the ampy documentation or help. I would imagine other development tools have this same capability.