Re: Adventures in Quest for GUI RAD

Hello,

> But I know from past experience that I am not going to make a lot of
> progress teaching myself any form of C language.

I had to learn programming with Pascal at university first. It worked
for me.

Then I had to learn Fortran. Didn't like some things about it, but
still managed to get it to work.

Then I had to learn C and H-A-T-E-D it. Never used it and forgot
everyhing about it after the class' final test.

And then I heard about the existence of Python. The first language I
learned voluntarily and the only one I'm still using. If Python didn't
exist, I wouldn't have done anything related to programming since
university. Just as I wouldn't use computers out of work if Macs
didn't exist.

> I should have made it clear that I am just a hobbyist teaching
> myself in my spare time, for fun.

I'm not a developer either. Nor am I using Python intensively in my
job.

Despite this I'm planning to spend a week (during my vacation!) at
Europython this year. And the trip there plus the registration fee
will cost me quite a bit of money - Sweden is expensive and not quite
around the corner.

What is nice about Python especially for non-professional programmers:

- it scales from trivial throw-away command-line scripts (<=> Delphi)
to beyond what you will ever need (the GNUe project is implementing an
ERP system with it)
- it interfaces with basically every kind of library, interface or
whatever; you can use COM on Windows (<=> Java), Applescript on the
Mac and lots of open source applications use it as their scripting
language

Consequently, Python alone is likely to get everything done that you
will ever need in your whole life.

And - Postgres suports it as a "second native" language for triggers,
stored procedures etc.

And - you don't have to deal with memory management (you can "help"
the garbage collector by resolving cyclic references yourself, but you
don't have to)

> It is just too bad that there is not a better, more user friendly,
> well documented front-end tool for Postgresql in open source.

Err, you mean an IDE which allows to implement GUI applications (using
Postgres or not) easily?

For Python there are quite a few which use either wxPython or PyQt (or
GTK, but those are for Linux and *BSD).

One using wxyPthon is GNUe designer, although it is unfortunately
badly (mostly un-)documented.

Black Adder is an example for one using Qt. It even allows you to
build not-open-source applications with PyQt due to a special
licensing arrangement.

OpenOffice forms allow to do nice things as well, with or without
Python (via PyUNO). In fact imho instead of implementing yet another
open-source database for 2.0, they should just have included a
Postgresql (SDBC?) driver in OO.

> I guess MSAccess is fine, except expensive.

And it's REALLY limited in what you can do (not just concerning the
amounts of data it can handle).

> Also, given the fact that M$ has pulled the rug out from under
> Visual Basic, one can never be too certain what the future will be
> for something like MSAccess.

Won't happen with Python. Even if Guido van Rossum would get run over
by a truck tomorrow (which hopefully won't happen), it would keep
getting developed, because it has grown far to usefull for far too
many people. And no MS, Sun, Oracle or whoever can pull the plug on
it. The same applies to wxWidgets.

> Even the world of Visual Foxpro has in some ways slowly eroded
> because of perennial rumors that Microsoft will withdraw support for
> it.

Some ex-Visual Foxpro developers are currently working on a
replacement called Dabo and guess what they are using - Python and
wxWidgets.

> Perhaps the stunning success of the Open Source community is fueled
> by the ruthless and fickle nature of companies such as Microsoft.
> One would like to build upon some foundation that is not going to
> disappear in a few years. Realbasic looks like an attractive
> alternative to Visual Basic, but then that is one lone company which
> is riding the Tusnami of the Windows operating system (although I
> guess they are cross platform),

Beep - RealBasic was implemented on the Mac first. :-)

> but the point is, whatever one chooses to learn, if it is tied to
> Windows, then its future is tied to the whims of Microsoft.

Not necessarily.

With Pyhon and wxWidgets or Qt, you can easily work on Windows, Linux,
*BSD (and MacOS and Windows CE and PalmOS and your series 60 Nokia
mobile phone and and and) today and not worry too much about whether
(and on what system) you'll be able to use it tomorrow.

Best regards

Wolfgang Keller

--
P.S.: My From-address is correct