Python GUIs: Abandoning TkInter and welcoming wxPython?

[Mikael Lyngvig]

On Sun, 27 Jun 1999 08:31:56 GMT, Andrew Cooke 

>1. Speed.  For most applications, is this an issue?  Python is, above
>all, a scripting language.  Speed is not important.  What you can do -
>and do fairly simply with Tk, once you know it, is build a GUI front-
>end to whatever programs you are tying together.  The text widget, for
>example, is amazingly flexible with very little code.

I don't agree that speed is not important, because Python is a
scripting language.  The really great thing about Python, IMHO, is
that it actually performs well enough that you're rarely affected by
the fact that it's an interpreted language - especially because the
standard libraries offers native implementations of many CPU intensive
tasks.  When this is an issue, you have the option of creating C
support modules.

I believe that Python is fast enough that you can use it to create
"commercial grade" applications, if only the GUI part does not reveal
that the application wasn't written in C. 

(I guess this depends on the tasks you do with Python; for me it is
usually I/O bound tasks, so the speed of the interpreter is of little
concern to me)

>If you are programming games or graphics-intensive code then sure, use
>another (C-based) GUI - Python is designed to make this easy, just
>as you can drop into C if non-graphics code is CPU intensive.

I agree, but I'd never even think of doing a graphics-intensive
application in Python, except perhaps to prototype it.


-- Mikael