On Wed, 16 Mar 2005 21:33:36 -0800, "Mike Cox" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >Where I work we use Microsoft Office with a lot of customization using >Visual Basic. I would like to switch to Python to do it since VB is being >discontinued. Would Python meet our requirements? I need to make lots of >GUI applications (message boxes, forms, etc.) and do the underlying business >logic too.
I wouldn't advise you to switch to Python from VB if... 1. the installer must be downloaded from the Net, so must be kept as small as possible (GUI layers like wxWidgets of PyGTK add several megabytes to your app) 2. you're used to sophisticated GUI designers like VB or Delphi, and want something as polished 3. you expect an IDE as rich as those two proprietary tools (including IntelliSense, intigrated GUI designer, compiler, etc.) 4. your app uses third-party components that are not available to platforms other than VB (or Delphi) After checking out the tools currently available, I got to the conclusion that Python is a very fine tool for text-based apps or moderately-sophisticated GUI apps like BitTorrent. For more demanding GUI apps, I would advise you stick to VB until the .Net framework stabilizes and trickles down to being available on 80% of hosts, at which point you can safely trade horses (VB.Net does solve some of the oddities of VB Classic.) In an ideal world, we'd have open-source development tools as rich as VB or Delphi, but at this point, I haven't found any that doesn't fall short on any of the points above (probably because the work involved is underevaluated, and just not doable without a constant and sufficient revenue stream.) Just my opinion, Joe. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
