gord wrote: > As a complete novice in the study of Python, I am asking myself where this > language is superior or better suited than others. For example, all I see in > the tutorials are lots of examples of list processing, arithmetic > calculations - all in a DOS-like environment. > > What is particularly disappointing is the absence of a Windows IDE, > components and an event driven paradigm. How does Python stand relative to > the big 3, namely Visual C++, Visual Basic and Delphi? I realize that these > programming packages are quite expensive now while Python is free (at least > for the package I am using - ActivePython). > > Please discuss where Python shines. > Gord > > With python I can write:
Windows simple/complex scripts Windows console applications Windows COM objects Windows Services Windows GUI applications (wxPython, QT, TK) Windows games Web framework based apps (Zope, CherryPie, TurboGears, etc). Linux simple/complex scripts Linux console applications Linux daemons Linux GUI applications (wxPython, QT, TK) Linux games Mac simple/complex scripts Mac console applications Mac daemons Mac GUI applications (wxPython, QT, TK) Mac games Web framework based apps (Zope, CherryPie, TurboGears, etc). (I haven't personally done a lot on the Mac, but I understand that these can be done) Web CGI applications Web active server pages Web soap/XML applications Try to cover all those bases in any of the "big 3". With anything other than Python I find I must use multiple languages and many different collections of libraries. With Python I'm not constantly bouncing back-and-forth between languages and now I seem to be always getting better at writing... you guessed it...Python. Instead of learning a new language every time I change platforms, I just add libraries/modules that meet the specific needs of the platform or the application that I'm trying to implement. With version upgrades of multiple languages on multiple platforms with upgrades to multiple standard libraries, it was getting completely unmanageable. If you only have to deal with GUI apps on Windows I guess VB or Delphi would be fine. If you need to deploy to multiple platforms (Windows, Linux, Mac) IMHO neither of them will work very well. C++ is as portable, but the extra code that you must write would be substantial. -Larry Bates -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
