Geoff Canyon wrote:
Those of you who know me know that I am always fascinated by
different programming languages. I've programmed in more than a few,
but read up on dozens. Lately I've been taking a stab at Python.
I'm keeping track of progress at http://learningpython.wordpress.com/
So far it's mostly gripes and rants ;-)
The reason I say sort-of off topic is that I'm making no secret of
the fact that I come from a Revolution background. The latest post
compares the out-of-the-box experience between Rev and a Python IDE.
In Rev, installation and building a standalone application takes 16
steps, including retrieving and entering the demo license code. In
Python, after 10 steps I have downloaded nothing, installed nothing,
and built nothing, have gone down a blind alley or two, and have more
questions than I started with.
Before I go and read the blog, I'll take a wild guess that you're on a
Mac. Why ?
1. Python installation on Windows tends to be pretty smooth (both
Python itself and tools for it)
Python installation on Linux tends to assume you know everything already
Oh yeah, darn, better do something for the Mac too - try this ...
OK, OS X is probably not really an afterthought these days - but it used
to be, and often still feels like it.
For a long time I believed the inverse of Rev - that it must be really
smooth and work well on Mac, but it still had all these rough edges and
fairly "basic and unavoidable" problems on Win. Even though various
people on here said it wasn't the case, it still felt like Rev must be
an office full of Macs with the one PC used for creating release in a
corner somewhere. (Note - I said "creating a release", not "testing a
release" :-)
The last couple of releases (that's 2.6 and 2.6.1 - I'm not ready for
2.7 yet) have come a long way to reduce the Windows oddities, so I no
longer feel quite that way.
2. Python on Mac still feels a bit unfinished.
I installed Python on Win probably 3 or 4 years ago (mostly for CGI and
command line stuff), added a graphic toolkit about 2 years ago and had
basically no problems; about the same time I installed Rev and had a
couple of minor problems with the installation process - and significant
problems with the Windows bugs and incompatibilities (at the time -
they're better now).
Less than a year ago I got a Mac, installed Python and graphic toolkit
on it - and although it was 15 months later, it was not as clean an
install process and still doesn't look as though Python is fully "bedded
in" on Mac. Rev on the other hand was entirely smooth - confirmed what
I had long suspected :-) Of course, that's unfair - by that time, Rev
was at 2.6 and the Windows problems had also gone away.
I'm not honestly sure today how to build a standalone on Mac (but then I
don't need to - I distribute a few app to friends with PCs, but don't
have anyone out there who wants them on Macs, so I've had no reason to
find out). On Windows, it is really easy - marginally more effort than
for Rev, but to make up for that I've had less trouble with differences
between development and standalone modes on Python than I had on Rev.
(And there isn't, afaik, a way to do cross-platform standalone builds in
Python - but I don't find that a disadvantage anyway, because I believe
you need to do testing on the target platform anyway, and so providing a
build/release environment there isn't a bad thing).
When I get past the install and start describing actually programming
in Python, it should be better.
In any case, feel free to have a look and post feedback, even if it's
just to point out where I went wrong in the Python install process ;-)
Will do.
--
Alex Tweedly http://www.tweedly.net
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