Debugging ActiveX Control Events in wxPython/PythonWin

[David Bolen]

Charles Medcoff <cmedcoff at my-deja.com> writes:

> I work at a software house that mainly utilizes Visual C++ and have
> been thinking for a while that we use too much C++.  It slows
> development.  I have had the idea of trying to pitch Python/wxPython as
> an alternative to much of the GUI/problem domain work that we do.  It
> will be hard to sell without sort of active support/development going
> on by someone.

While certainly not minimizing the benefit of the ongoing development
by Mark, ActiveState, or whomever, one thing that should always be
included in such a discussion is the fact that you have full source to
everything to extend it yourself if you happen to run into a case that
isn't yet supported by the third parties and/or just needs a fix for
your environment.

True, that's not always practical, and it definitely isn't the same as
a commercial product with support, or a support contract with a third
party to do the work, but it's also a non trivial benefit (IMO) - in
terms of assurance that you have control of your own destiny - when it
comes to weighing or selling the decision.  Especially if, as you
note, you're already a C++ house, so extending the current extension
libraries would not likely be an impossible task if necessary, since
the alternative would likely to be to write similar code in C++
directly.

In my case, I've chosen Python/wxPython for a few of our recent
applications.  At this point, we're just using stock wxPython
releases, but early on I ran tests to ensure that I could rebuild the
entire system in my own environment.  That gave me the "warm fuzzies"
that should I need to fix something and wasn't able to wait for the
fix to be an official one, or if for some reason the whole
wxWindows/wxPython project disappeared tomorrow, I could do so.
Personally, I feel more in control then cases when I know I'm
dependent on Microsoft to fix something, since they're going to work
on their priorities and time schedules, which may or may not match
with mine.

--
-- David
-- 
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