[Edu-sig] Learn to Program in Ten Years

[Kirby Urner]

> While you are preparing judgements -- both wxPython and The Gnome Desktop,
> hence the GIMP, GTK and PyGTK are more popular in North America than they
> are in Europe.  We are vastly more likely to use KDE than Gnome.
> wxWindows is not all that popular here: I am trying to think of a single 
> site that uses is, and coming up empty.  But I can think of 10 QT sites 
> off the top of my head. Anecdotal for sure, but I don't think I am useless

> as a barometer of local popular sentiment.

Hey Laura, thanks for sharing that perspective.  I'm a KDE user myself these
days though I use Gnome at a certain police station.

When I did a Needs Assessment for Meyer Memorial, a very large and active
charitable trust here in PDX, it came down to Qt and wx as the two most
promising platforms for GUI coders who want to use Python.  Meyer is an OS X
shop, so the ability of both of these to comply with Aqua's user interface
standards was an important consideration.

Qt currently has license restrictions for the Windows developer.  Plus it
wasn't clear that Meyer really wanted or needed to underwrite code that'd
work on all three platforms, which both of these technologies aim to provide
(I left that decision to them -- my job, as I saw it, was to spell out
alternatives, not to make all the key decisions for them (the consequences
of their decision-making should be theirs, not Free Geek's)).

If Python isn't your thing, then of course the playing field opens to other
candidates.  Java for example.  Or, if you're just going to write for OS X,
there's always using Cocoa directly.

The wx community struggles mightily to force GTK on Linux to comply with all
the specs, even while it goes with Carbon on OS X and the win32 GUI API on
Windows.  It tries to run on both Classic Mac and multiple versions of
Windows (with widely varying levels of Unicode support).  It's a huge
undertaking.

> Which reminds me.  Nearly everbody I know wants a Mac for Christmas.  So
> perhaps we are only numerating the dinosaurs here.
> 
> Laura

Apple continues to be out of reach for a lot of us.  That we have a robust
and powerful free Linux available, that runs on recycled Wintel, is what
keeps us in the game.  I don't think this will change very soon.  Plus I'm
*glad* that Wintel boxes have value after they've been fully amortized in
the Windows world.  From a Free Geek standpoint, that keeps the barrier to
entry very low (just give us some time, and we'll give you training and a
Pentium Freekbox running Debian).

Kirby